Crusty Greybird

Took some time to practice our companion rescue skills today at the beacon park on the summit of Whitefish Mountain Resort. With a little time left in the day we wandered northwest of the ski area to look for more buried surface hoar.

• It's not people with beacons that can save their friends, it's people who practice with their beacons. FAC staff makes sure to refresh our skills monthly. I recommend professional instruction, like you can find on our Education Page. I also think the folks at BCA have put together some excellent videos demonstrating the basics. Food for thought.
• It was a bummer to find another thin freezing rain crust at the surface. All aspects and elevations where we traveled. It was breakable and you could ski through it, but it wasn't exactly good skiing. (See photo 2.)
• As we started to skin up a low-angled, south-southwest facing, mid-elevation ridge to look for the persistent slab problem on northerly slopes, I did a quick hand pit and was surprised to find preserved surface hoar buried about 10 inches down. We found it in 2 hasty pits on this aspect. We got mixed results in our tests: sudden planar compression tests, but no propagation in long column tests. (See photos and snowpack tab.)
• Temperatures were just below freezing above about 6000 feet throughout the day. Clouds and light ridgetop winds kept the surface frozen and crusty until we descended to about 4700 feet, where the top few inches of snow were moist.