Sapphire Col
In spite of wind swirling off the tree triangle and Asulkan hut, there were no slab properties found on the climb to Sapphire Col; in hand shears or breaking trail. The top 40-50cm was fist to four finger resistance, with a thin 1cm windskin in isolated spots.

Descent to Lily Col
Dropping into the south side of Sapphire Col was a different story. Northerly winds had loaded the slope, with 25-80cm above the Feb 15 suncrust. The top 10cm formed a one finger to pencil hard slab which was reactive to ski cuts to size 1. Lower down the south side and through Lily Col, there’s been extensive wind effect with firm wind drifts and sastrugi.

Dome Bootpack-Descent
In the last few days, wind and snow deposited drifts of 1m on the lower boot pack. Through the rocky upper section, it’s back to 10cm on shale, with several ways to find decent bucket steps through to the ridgeline.

Dropping off the top, we carefully made our way onto the slope, investigating for wind slab, but only found isolated pockets of superficial cracking in the top 5cm. We still gave the large descent convex roll a wide birth, and made our way to the conservative line down the skiers right ridge, skiing supported terrain to treeline with no reactivity or evidence of any new natural avalanches in that bowl.

Slab properties increased as we approached treeline from northeast winds blowing upslope. We were able to ski cut size 1’s on the top convexity of the lower pitch of the Dome direct descent. The presence and reactivity of the slab were enough to sell us on plan B, and we descended the far skiers left side of the slide path.