Into the Abyss

Quick report

Weather

cloudy

Ride Type

alpineSlopes, openTrees

Stayed Away

convexSlopes, steepSlopes

Riding Quality

ok

Snow Conditions

powder, windAffected

We saw a lot of terrain despite the in-and-out clouds and snow flurries today. It wasn't windy but previous strong southwest winds have scoured much of the alpine terrain in the Big Y drainages. If you're looking for good riding, your best bet is lower elevation sheltered slopes. We were on the hunt for wind slabs but didn't find any. We didn't see any new avalanches either. We dug on both south and north aspects, between 1100 m and 1400 m, and while we found the crust/facet weak layer at 70 cm and 90 cm deep, we didn't get any concerning results on this layer today. We're still avoiding large, steep open slopes, especially where ridgetop start zones are shallow, as weak layers like this are difficult to predict and those are the most likely areas of terrain that would produce a large avalanche.