The Canadian Mountain and Ski Guide training program has been operating out of the Revelstoke Mountain Resort backcountry for the last couple of days. We have been digging around in an effort to better understand the nature of the widespread November 12th rain crust. The result is that it's variability has us making decisions that might seem conservative given many of the other observations out there.

Two days ago we did a profile at 2100m on a SW aspect. The snowpack was 150cm deep and the top of the crust was about 80cm below the surface. A compression test resulted in an easy, sudden collapse result (8 light taps) on a layer of facets just above the crust. We did a propagation saw test with another relatively 'easy' result of 37/100 and the block failed to it's end (see attached photo). Both of these results caught our attention as they are indicative of a fairly poor bond under an 80cm slab.

Today we dug at a slightly lower elevation (~2000m) and found very different test results. We were unable to get a failure at the crust interface and were also unable to find any significant faceting.

Ultimately, our confidence will be low until we can better understand the variability of this layer.

On the good side, the skiing above 1900m has been great.

Marc Piché
Kirsten Knechtel