A couple of friends and I made it up to Cameron Pass on Tuesday and found great conditions. A couple weeks worth of mild weather allowed for the consolidation of the snowpack’s upper layers while the weak storm cycle that came through this past weekend dropped several inches of low density precipitation with little wind. Unfortunately the winds picked up Monday night and began their usual cycle of destruction. By Tuesday morning the face was a blank slate with few tracks from the weekend visible, (though soft sastrugi –like wind runnels were obvious on most exposed slopes). Another party of backcountry enthusiasts were skiing the slopes of South Diamond that slid back on January 10th and it looked like they had triggered a small slide near the summit ridge. Other small pockets of natural activity were visible on the center of the face as well. [Read More]
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Snow geekery at its finest. Note the shovel placement to keep those centigrade dial stem thermometers nice and accurate. Is that a 90-degree corner? Why yes it is. Thank you for noticing. I beat Level 2 of Avalanche Education last week. The end boss was real hard. I had to get all funky and whip out an up-down-left-left-A-B combo, front flip over the avalanche path of death, and then memorize about 12 gazillion codes and acronyms, BIWWWI (but it was well worth it). ILAT (I learned a ton). And I got to splurge on some new fancy, SST (snow study tools). I couldn’t have asked for a better learning environment. In Crested Butte, the trailheads and field labs (a.k.a Sick gnar pow slopes) are only a 5-minute drive from the classroom. It’s the next best thing to a hut trip course. Plus, CB finally got a bunch of the white cold stuff that makes our world go round – that’s right, snow. Good old fashioned frozen water that falls from the sky. So we got to tromp around in the backcountry measuring the weather and digging snow pits while the second-largest slide cycle I’ve witnessed boomed, whumphed and [Read More] |
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