Chris Moneypenny messaged me last night and wanted to go skiing but to be honest the temps weren’t getting me too excited to head out. Regardless he showed up just after 10am and we headed to Great Divide Lodge.
We started skinning up behind the lodge in multi layered down jackets until reaching the glades above Trucker’s Drainage where we were able to start taking off layers. After getting some pictures of Paget’s east aspect we start up the drainage just west of the Bosworth closure. The snow looked awful but the views were good so we decided to head up towards the weather station.
At around 2600m we found a wind slab that we didn’t like and we bailed on the unnamed summit and switched over at a high point below the massive cornice that threatens the upper bowl. We skied from about 2650m all the way to the wildlife fence at 1600m. A long ski descent but would have been nice with more predictable snow/turns. At around 2000m we could feel the temps drop and on the skin back to the parking lot we were freezing.
The snow in the area is highly variable and not worth going into because you will find just about everything there right now. The spots we didn’t like for safety had wind slab over a firm solar crust/ice. The slab didn’t slide well over the bed surface but we didn’t feel like testing it more than we already were. There was also a previous cornice collapse in the lower bowl which had triggered a small avalanche on this wind slab layer so if the upper cornice went we figured the same would happen.
