Larsen Hut: All the VIZ!

Quick report

Weather

warm, sunny

Ride Type

steepSlopes, sunnySlopes, openTrees, alpineSlopes, mellowSlopes, denseTrees, convexSlopes

Riding Quality

good

Snow Conditions

windAffected, powder

Avalanche Conditions

avalancheConditionTemp

Spent 3 days, 4 nights at Larsen Hut from January 19th-23rd. First group of 2021, spent the first day shovelling the hut and outhouse doors out. Calm, clear and blue skies for the entire trip! Jan 20th: Toured up to the top of Mt Gordon and traversed south skiing powder from the alpine into the tree chutes below and over to the burnt trees. We observed snow sluffing off the trees below 1100m. When we got back to Larsen that afternoon we noticed a Mini Cooper size cornice broke off the north face of Gordon and triggered a size two slide. Jan 21st: Early start towards Mt Hipp. Ski crampons and the eventual transition to boot crampons to get up the last 100m to the subpeak. Sheltered leeward zones were very reactive. Nothing propagated much more than a meter away from our skis. Triggered a size one on the descent. Good quality snow for the majority of the descent. Lots of point release sluffing observed off Mt slam on south facing steeps. Jan 22nd: Toured up to the top of Mt Gordon twice with the first line traversing along risky ridge to a subpeak and then skiing back down Canada Day. When we traversed under the north face of Gordon, we got a good look at the cornice that broke off and the slide it triggered. Second run down the west face of Gordon and continuing below the hut into the drainage meeting up with the end of our first run. Temperature was recorded up to +0.5 at the top of Gordon. Lots of new sluffing down east and south drainages at lower elevations (below 1000m). No new activity observed around or near the cabin. There was significant surface hoar growth in our time up there. The solar did a good job of breaking it down on solar aspects but on north facing and protected slopes around TL there was still very prominent SH to be wary of with future snowfalls. Overall great skiing quality and amazing weather to be had in the alpine. Recent storm snow appears to be bonding well.