Today we skied in the Doglegs. We ascended Muzzle Ridge to access Dogleg Front Right. As we moved out of the trees, we found wind slab buried by the weekend's storm. I experienced a large whumpf as I intentionally stepped south of the ridge just onto the slope. The shooting crack ran up and around the bowl, approximately 100m. The slab remained in place. Above the ridge was scoured to rock and covered by 10cm of new storm snow. We entered carefully along the ridge and skied the lower path. There is old debris in the centre from the wind slab cycle last week.
At the bottom of treeline, we experienced cracking in the storm snow without propagation. There was little wind slab development at these elevations last week, but there was definitely facet growth with the shallower snowpack. The trees are tight right now at the bottoms of the slide paths.
We found better skiing further south of The Dogleg Majore in the open larches with protected boot top powder.
Temps at the vehicle were consistent at -16c throughout the tour.
Happy skiing!
Brent Peters
PeakSTRATAGEM.com