I spent this period guiding out of the very comfortable Sentry Lodge. The first few days were extremely cold like everywhere, so we saw little movement in the snowpack but were leery of the two December layers.

Suddenly on New Year's Eve afternoon, we had two skier remotes (no involvements) on the 15 Dec surface hoar, both on north aspects at ~2000m (treeline) - one from 75 metres away. We then noticed the air temperature had warmed 10C in a short period, so theorised this was the added load.

The following days we observed wrinkling and settlement cracks on steep rolls at all aspects at treeline, again on the 15 Dec layer. We suspect most of these released that same afternoon.

Although we saw no further activity over the next few days, we kept that layer on our radar. Snowpack tests showed little bonding to the upper snowpack, so we monitored potential developing slab properties carefully.

Ski quality was excellent in mostly unconsolidated knee deep powder. Trail breaking was good exercise.