MCR Observation

I spent the last 3 days with my ski buddy Giacomo Fano in Rogers Pass - 2 days on the Dome (Mon., Tues.) and 1 day in Grizzly Bowl (Wed.).

I haven't seen anything posted on the Asulkan in a while so I thought people may be curious about conditions there. Travel up(and down) the summer trail is much better after the recent storm snow and you no longer need to de-ski to negotiate open creeks etc.

There appeared to be approximately 60-80cms of recent storm snow in this drainage - the lower half was a bit upside down on Monday making for tough going out front with 40-60cms of ski penetration in what I call "1,2,3 snow" - meaning it takes about 3 seconds each step to crush the snow under your skis - kind of like doing endless leg presses! Probing on the Dome indicated a snowpack of 300cms - with the Nov.13th crust down 175cms

By Tuesday the lower storm snow had settled out in spite of the cool temps (Mon. -7, Tues. -9, Wed. -16 in parking lot) and the ski quality all 3 days was amazing.

In the Asulkan we noted several previous slab avalanche that appeared to have released near the end of the first storm cycle - likely Saturday? Youngs peak look like it has lots of wind effect and a loose avalanche on the south side of the Headwall pitch.

Of note yesterday when we were up Grizzly bowl (hoping to find some sun!) we observed a very recent (maybe overnight) size 2.5 slab avalanche that had released from high on Grizzly peak. It failed in a steep shallow rocky piece of terrain just below ridgeline (@2500m.) - it looked like it was the result of recent wind loading or perhaps a small cornice fall - took out the recent storm snows and ran for at least a 400m. vertical, but did not step down to the Nov.13 crust.