AST 2 Investigating conditions in Fraser Chutes

Quick report

Weather

cloudy, warm

Ride Type

alpineSlopes, mellowSlopes

Stayed Away

alpineSlopes, steepSlopes, convexSlopes

Riding Quality

ok

Snow Conditions

windAffected, powder, heavy

Avalanche Conditions

avalancheConditionSound

We headed out with our AST 2 group to check out conditions in the Fraser chutes area. Our main goals for the day were to see how the new snow from last weekend was bonding to the surface layers from earlier in February and assess conditions moving from tree line onto some mellow alpine slopes. We did have a whumpf in a lee loaded area below tree line while skinning up. Overall the snow from last weekends storms seems to be gradually bonding to the previous surface layer and may well continue to with time. We didn’t observe any shooting cracks and were pleasantly surprised to find more stable conditions than anticipated. Conditions at and above treeline were a mix of pockets of wind loaded snow as deep as about 30-40 cm to exposers sastrugi from before last weekends weather. We avoided slopes above 30 degrees.