Did a big loop on the Puzzle Peak Ramp run today with Kaitlin Paris and Adrian Thibault.
Followed the very packed skin track up through the forest and along the drainage below the east aspect of Dolomite Shoulder. Found several avalanche debris deposits along the way. After skinning through the ant hills and boulder fields we found ourselves under the very tracked up run. We followed the looker’s left skin track almost to the top before switching over to boot packing for the final 20m or so. After a short downclimb we switched over and skied down heading far skier’s left over to the large untouched powder fields found along the cliff edge. Mid way down we then headed skier’s right to join up with the rolling terrain leading to the creek drainage at treeline. We decided to switch over to skins here and head back to find a skin track to avoid low snow. After a bit of bushwhacking we found the access track and headed back out to the road.
Another beautiful day in the alpine except some very high winds that hammered us at the top of the run. Mostly sunny with building cloud cover near the end of the day. Saw some small isolated loose snow avalanches (very small 1s) in the upper reaches of the run near sharp rolls, likely caused by rapid wind loading – not a big deal but if the winds keep up like this then I’d expect direct lee slabs to start forming. Solar snow down in the forest started to become a little heavy in the afternoon.
