Listen to Your Harp

Today we went out to Harp Mountain to check out what effect yesterday’s rain and warm temperatures had on the snowpack. Most of the terrain at and above treeline was very wind effected, so we sought out sheltered areas in the trees where the snow was still soft on the sleds. We looked at a lot terrain today but the only avalanche activity we saw were point releases from the trees dropping their snow and two very small wind slabs on a steep east feature at ridge crest. We were surprised to see very little slab avalanche activity.  We were hunting the late January surface hoar hard, and found a hefty crust in its place.  We put some aggressive sled cuts in small but steep terrain features and got no results.