I love living in AK. We were welcomed back from the lower 48 with 10+ inches of fresh and bluebird skies. Thank you Ullr. I warn you, this is a picture heavy update…bluebird skies and warm temps equal technology invasion. My gopro has been acting weird, so I don’t really have any helmet cam footy, just a few shots. These pictures are from Friday and Sunday. I chose just to ride and enjoy the pass on saturday…It was epic.
Mashing some freshie potatoes                   Lovin the graybird shred locale
Post Storm Skies and deep Pow                 They call him a Shredi
On Sunday the forecast was mostly cloudy with isolated snow showers. I was a bit doubtful in the lot but the showers never showed up…the sun did though. With temps in the 20′s and clear skies we skied untracked pow all day long!
Sunrise Skintrack                                Going for gold
Cody dog killin it                                  Back at it…sick photos by Erin!
Farming turns with the canine                Bash greenlighting it
The next two shot are from my GoPro cam. For some reason it kept reverting back to photo. Hence the following POV shots:
Mitch, Ed and Cody look over                                Yeahhhhh!!!
Now to the technical stuff. I dont usual go into this much detail but I feel that after this weekend’s events, why not spread the word on my observations. On Saturday it was super warm up high. The sun was definitely creating an upper crust and the snow felt pretty wet by noon. A compression test on a south aspect, 32 degree slope showed medium failure on the new snow/old snow interface (CT13, Q3). Below this was a consolidated slab about 6-8 inches thick on top of about two ft. of sugar and facets. The next failure was a hard failure (CT23 Q2) but the column failed clean all the way to the ground. With local factors and visuals from that day we decided to give it a go. We dropped two cornice blocks onto loaded north slopes today and got nothing. We found great snow, but it could be variable up high in spots.
