A Bit Miserable at Morfee

Riding was a bit miserable today. With temperatures at -20 and strong northeast winds howling through the trees we took some time to poke around but didn’t do much riding. Light snow from this week was quick to form drifts on the access road and pile up in areas that are not usually loaded. This formed new hard slabs 10 to 25cm thick. We saw many large shooting cracks from the skis of our sleds as we headed up the road. Digging along one of these cracks revealed a layer of recently buried surface hoar that is making these slabs even more reactive. In some places this surface hoar appears to have been blown away, but in areas loaded by wind, or sheltered from it, this layer remains preserved and reactive. We will be keeping a close eye on this as a developing problem.