Tour de Treeline

After a quick stop to check on wind slabs on a favored ridge line, we snaked our way around middle elevation terrain to monitor the persistent slab problem in the Southern Whitefish Range.

• After stomping all along the lee side of the ridge we finally found one sensitive wind slab that failed with an easy kick. The slab propagated about 25 feet wide at the old/new snow interface and ran about 75 feet down a 40 degree slope. The only other results we got testing the ridge were small cracks and chunks of cornice that took some effort to move.
• Aside from the odd wind prone slope, the snow surface today consisted of about 6 inches of very light, soft snow from the last storm on top of another 6" of pretty light snow and graupel above the 12/22 interface. The 12/22 crust peters out at about 5900' where it becomes a very thin, very soft layer of sugary grains. If the winds increase and remain steady as we get more snow, this soft snow above the 12/22 interface will probably help with new wind slab development. The interface buried on 12/22 may be a weak layer with more of a slab on top of it.
• We dug on several, mid elevation, aspects with fairly consistent, non-propagating results on the most recent storm interface, the 12/22 interface, the 12/14 interface, and near the 12/9 crust. The 12/9 crust was under about 32 inches of more recent snow no matter where we went. The weakest snowpack we saw was on a southeast aspect where we got repeated propagating results in large faceted grains under the 12/9 crust.

After seeing that we could trigger stiffer wind slabs below cornices, and after getting propagating results in a snowpack structure that was consistent everywhere we went, we chose to ride planar and concave slopes less than 35 degrees with no wind affect. Those choices rewarded us with low angled, gladed powder skiing at it's best, and we didn't have a care in the world.