sofa mountain

Quick report

Weather

cold, foggy

Ride Type

steepSlopes, openTrees, alpineSlopes, mellowSlopes

Riding Quality

ok

Snow Conditions

powder, crusty

On Wednesday Jan 31 we skied in and climbed an ice route on Sofa Mtn (max elevation 2200m). 15-40cm below treeline, 0-300+ elsewhere (skiing possible only in lee slopes/sheltered features). 4cm soft snow overlies a temperature crust (mainly supportive to skis - fast travel) below treeline, with 20cm over hard wind affected surfaces at treeline and in the Alpine. In lee features this was soft windslabs, often with small cornices - we were able to trigger 2m lengths of soft cornice and get 2m shooting cracks in the slab in small, safe 'test slopes'. The slab seemed fairly stubborn to human triggering in these lower-angled features, but we made sure to skirt around steep, unsupported pockets during our climb. We were OK with the overhead hazard on our climb; but only because there were no weather inputs - cold, with only light blowing snow at ridgetop. Key concern where we went was brittle, cracking ice; but large, aggressive alpine terrain in this area seemed very variable in depth due to wind exposure, even in lees. With many rock islands and thin spots, and the fact that we punched through tho facets near rocks a few times, we felt wary of the larger alpine slopes around (except the ones strripped back to scree). There had been a previous large avalanche from a steep NE lee slope in the alpine, the debris looked old/wind-eroded. Generally, it seemed like good travel conditions and relatively good skiing for here; but with small windslabs to manage in lee pockets, and still with the possibility of triggering a deep persistent slab in isolated areas. Conditions have probably been changing today with a few cm more snow and wind.