We just spent the last five days skiing in the Northern Monashees. Over the course of the trip, we had excellent ski conditions and observed little natural avalanche activity in the areas we skied. However on the flight out from our basecamp we observed numerous loose wet, cornice falls and glide slab avalanches to size three.

We had a spring diurnal mindset for our trip with the intense solar input and warming temperatures. Crust recovery decreased to zero last night at 1800m and natural loose wet activity increased as the sun came out today. Cornices, glide slabs and loose wet avalanches were our principal avalanche concerns.

We observed a 2.6m snowpack at 1800m and 3.5m+ in the alpine in the areas we travelled. Crevasses were well bridged. Cornices were large and looming and glide cracks were abundant and yawning.

We skied dry snow on NE-NW aspects and prime corn on SE-SW aspects.

Conor Hurley
www.arctosguides.com