Cirque North Couloir

Quick report

Weather

windy, sunny

Ride Type

mellowSlopes, alpineSlopes, steepSlopes, denseTrees

Stayed Away

sunnySlopes

Riding Quality

ok

Snow Conditions

windAffected, hard

Pretty good day with amazing views and overall good skiing! We toured up to the base of the South Ridge of Cirque through Helen Creek. The skin track was pretty well frozen and some kick turns in the canyon were slippery to say the least, but it was fast travel, and the snow softened up as we went higher and the day got warmer. There is basically no snow, or really sparse patches of it so we basically had to bootpack the whole ridge, which took longer than expected. We brought two 60m ropes for the rappel down the couloir because we weren't sure of the conditions in it and wanted to avoid skiing most of it as we were concerned about the deep persistent layer, as this is a pretty steep, thin and shallow feature. We realized as we got there that it was a good idea as there we not much snow in it and we needed the full length of the ropes to rappel past all the rocks. One 60m or two 30m could've done it in two raps, but since we were a group of 5 we didn't want to be all hanging at the dodgy second rap station. The last 20-30m of the couloir was hard and crusty snow, which made for some interesting step turns. The snow quality improved a lot in the North Bowl, and we got a pretty decent run out of it. We exited through the drainage between Observation Sub-Peak and Cirque, and the ski was better than we were expecting. Some sharks here and there but overall a pretty smooth ski down to the road. Great day in the mountains!

Snowpack

Depth

200

Obs Type

summary

Site Aspect

N

Site Elevation

2900

Ski Penetration

0

Site Elevation Band

alp

Surface Conditions

variable

Avalanche

Run Length

100

Slab Width

30

Trigger Type

natural

Avalanche Size

2

Avalanche Character

corniceOnly

Number Of Avalanches

1

Start Zone Elevation

2990

Runout Zone Elevation

2700

Avalanche Observation

12to24hrsAgo

Start Zone Elevation Band

alp

Avalanche Occurrence Datetime

2023-03-23T18:00:00.000Z

A massive cornice fell (probably from solar input) from the summit of Cirque Peak into the North Bowl, bringing a lot of rocks and triggering a size 2 in the bowl. We didn't see it happen, but the debris looked fresh, probably from earlier in the day or the day before (March 22nd).