Stick to "Sheltered" Terrain

Braved the storm today in the Apgar Mountains
 

• 4-5 inches of new snow measured on Mark's remnant skin track from yesterday at 8:00am
• Widespread blowing snow and wind effected snow surfaces observed at all elevations above about 4500'
• Winds were swirling and blowing strong from all directions most of the day. Strongest gusts observed were blowing out of the SE predominantly. We estimate these gusts were 40+ mph.
• The unsettled weather was rapidly deteriorating snow stability, so we opted to keep our travel confined to heavily sheltered lodgepole trees on slopes that were at or below about 30 degrees. The violent winds still penetrated this forest, that on most days would offer quite a bit of protection.
• The wind affected snow in the trees was quite dense and prooved helpful for staying on top of a shallow snowpack to link enjoyable turns. However there was definetly a lot of "near surface boosh" and cautious skiing was a must.
• It was difficult to measure the amount of new snow that fell during the day. The variability was extreme due to the winds and also the fact that the new snow fell on top a soft unconsolidated snow surface. We guess that about 8 inches fell above 5000' as of 2:00pm
• Based on periodic ski pole probes along our skin track. We believe that there is almost no basal ice layers (snow/rain crust that fell prior to Dec 4) present below 5700' on southerlies.
• We dug a snowpit at 6119' on a SSE slope. Stability test pointed to a reactive layer 35cm above the ground as our cheif problem. This failure plane was about 4cm below the freezing rain crust that Mark identified yesterday and was propagating on top of weak faceted snow. We also noted that warm temps and wind have deposited the most recent snow "upside down" unfortunately.