Sunny Days, Shifty Slopes.

Quick report

Weather

sunny, warm, windy

Ride Type

denseTrees, mellowSlopes

Stayed Away

alpineSlopes, openTrees

Riding Quality

ok

Avalanche Conditions

avalancheConditionSlab

Today in Elkford there is a a generally shallow snowpack where we dug at 2000 m there was 95 cm of snow in a sheltered treeline location. The accumulated snow since Feb 1 is roughly 30 to 40 cm, which sits on a very loose faceted mid and lower snowpack. There were several large avalanches that likely occurred during the last storm (possibly Sunday) many of these avalanches involved most of the snowpack and scrubbed the track and runouts to the ground. This avalanche activity was expected but there is a lot of terrain features that remain suspicious that did not run during the storm. Our snowpack tests indicated that the snowpack structure is weak. The consolidated layer of snow accumulated over the large facet layer was reactive and made us wonder why there wasn’t more avalanche activity. We suspect that this higher elevation area stayed Cooler during the storm and in many areas still may not have the load necessary for a full clean out.