I went skiing with friends today up Steep Creek on the Duffey Lake Rd.
We experienced a low snowpack as expected, but there was some skiing to be had. There was about 30cm at the highway, 80cm at 1775m, and 160cm at 2050m. The upper snowpack was right side up and we had 55cm of boot penetration in the alpine. For snowpack structure, have a look at the graph below. We had a deep tap test fail below the crust on mixed forms. The layer was down only 120cm where we did the test, contrary to our pit wall. We were able to find the dec 4 surface hoar, but it was unreactive to column tests or ski testing. There was evidence of light snow transport on lee features in the alpine and below ridge tops. We experienced mainly cloudy skies, light snowfall, temperatures around -5, and light and variable winds. As we all know, snowpack diminishes quickly below 1800m, and travel through below treeline is best done on a logging road to avoid the inevitable thrash.
Cheers
Jeff Van Driel
ACMG Ski Guide
