Rohr Ridge - Duffey Lake Road March 11th 2016
Southern Comfort - Rohr Ridge: Duffey Lake Road
Friday my dad and I skied a lap on Rohr Ridge down the south facing run called Southern Comfort on John Baldwin's map.
On the skin track, trail breaking was anywhere from 20-50cm deep in sheltered tree areas. Evidence of warming the previous day to 1400m with a 5cm thick but soft breakable crust.
Tree wells are currently very deep, being greater than 3 meters deep in areas. They present a major hazard if tree skiing and a large difficulty route finding on the up track.
Strong to extreme winds during previous storm evident with tree matter all over the road, but minimal hard windslab in the alpine. Still soft trail breaking to our high point of 2050m. Treeline and above, trail breaking closer to 10-20cm. Suspect winds calmed before the storm ended, leaving a little soft snow on scoured features.
Ski cutting on small, loaded, unsupported features, both with wind affect and without, produced very stubborn to no results.
Although we did not encounter any largely loaded terrain, we had good views of the area in the am and the only avalanche activity was a point release at 1500m starting low on a steep avalanche path. Likely from warming the previous day.
Cornices are large in many places.
Bonding of the new storm slab seems good but would still be very wary of wind loaded areas.
Ski conditions were good with snow getting heavy around 1500m and very gloopy below 1400m. Suspect new crust formed to ~1450m overnight. Alder in lower path quite present but with some diligent route finding, one can bob, weave and ski all the way to the road. Makes for a great 800m descent.
Have fun out there!