Nadahinni area - avalanche sightseeing

Quick report

Weather

sunny

Ride Type

mellowSlopes, alpineSlopes, sunnySlopes, steepSlopes

Riding Quality

good

Snow Conditions

powder, windAffected

Avalanche Conditions

avalancheConditionSnow

Spent a 3 day weekend in Haines Pass. It seems that the area avoided the rain last week, with only a temperature crust of 2 to 3 cm under 10 to 20cm of new snow was found at lower elevations. Witness evidence of a widespread natural avalanche cycle, likely happened during the warm up last Wednesday or shortly after. More than 20 avalanches were observed largely on the west side of the highway, around Nadahinni, towards Mineral Mtn, and further west. There was only minor avalanche activity on the east side of the hwy. Most of those avalanches were seen on north to east facing slope in the alpine, up to size 3.5. They were observed on a variety of terrain features, shallow zones but also sheltered high alpine slopes. We didn't investigated any of them from close, but crown depths appear to vary from 60 to 80cm suggesting as similar prolem as observed in Whitepass were buried surface hoar on similar slopes was reported. Step down to some deeper layers was also seen at a few locations creating some pretty impressive debris piles and running pretty far. Those observations are in line with some recent reports of the Haines Avalanche Center about weak interfaces in this area. Some great skiing and sledding was still had while staying mindful of aspects and potential weak layers!