Fraser: The Weather Outside is Weather

Quick report

Weather

cloudy, sunny, windy, warm

Ride Type

sunnySlopes, openTrees, alpineSlopes, mellowSlopes

Stayed Away

steepSlopes, convexSlopes

Riding Quality

amazing

Snow Conditions

windAffected, powder, deepPowder

Spent the past 4 days camped out in the White Pass. All kinds of weather! Dec 21 - Low cloud. We played low along the Bryant Lake Rd. Winds were strong from the south. Snow quality was good down low. Dec 22 - Partly cloudy. Could see the peaks so we started up fraser peak. The winds were very strong from the south again. Visibility was ok, but the winds were too much so we turned around at ~1400m. The plateau up to fraser ridge was pretty wind effected. As soon as we dropped to the north the winds died and the snow quality was good. No signs of recent avalanche activity. Dec 23. - Woke up to about 30cm of fresh snow and it continued to snow all day. Played down low with the sled and had many face shots. We figured we got around 50-60cm by the time it stopped snowing. Dec 24 - Started up an east facing slope from fraser camp on skis. Trail breaking was hard! Ski pen was about 55cm. As we broke tree line there was no notable wind crust. Compression test at about 1200m gave us top 55cm collapsing after one hit and a resistant planar failure after 8 blows. Extended column test had the same layer fail at 11 blows, but it didn’t propagate across the column. We continued up to about 1300m. The solar was pretty intense, the snow was getting denser so we decided to turn around. The turns down we’re the best we’ve had in the pass! On the way home on the 24th it was evident the solar was releasing snow off steep east and south facing slopes. Merry Christmas!