Over the weekend, our Level I course traveled much of the Mt Troy area.

On Saturday the 26th, we enjoyed good corn snow and intermittent sunshine in the Rescue Meadow, with strong gusty warm SE winds. The thick melt freeze layer that froze so solidly last week softened enough to allow digging and good conditions for rescue practice.

On Sunday the 27th, there was good corn snow below 650 m and new snow above. About 5 cm of fist hard moist new snow rapidly changing to early rounds was overlain by a semifrozen 1 cm 1 finger hard rime crust and about 3 to 5 cm of new moist snow. The rime crust slid off fairly easily in most of our block tests, though it caught ski edges and gave no signs of fracture on the descent. We encountered some firm layers when we dug deep, but we were able to get beyond some 70 cm of pencil hard melt freeze into mostly 1 finger hard moist rounds, and in some areas a layer of still-thawed 4 finger hard wet melt freeze.

On Monday the 28th, we took advantage of the solid and stable lower layers to explore some big avalanche paths. Some 10 - 15 cm of new moist to dry new snow over the rime crust made for good travel conditions, and gave us a chance to do tests in shallow sensitive fresh windslab when we got up into the SE winds on the higher slopes. No slopes tests gave results beyond shooting cracks and tiny 2 cm thick slabs, but most of our block tests produced easy to moderate fractures in the shallow new and windloaded snow. The amount of new snow did not yet present a threat, so we were able to work on routefinding and travel procedures in some big terrain.

The bond of the new snow from the past few days to the main melt freeze layers from the last few weeks is still not very strong. Watch that bond if we get much snow and wind this week.