[MCR] South Cariboos - Trophy Range

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Trophy Range- South Cariboos, Clearwater, BC.

Dec 8-10, 2010

Weather
The freezing level rose to about 900m around mid-day on Dec 8, with  
air temperatures falling to around -8.0 deg on the 9th at 2000m.  
Winds remained light with a few short gusts of moderate only at  
ridgeline.
Total storm snow amount is 20 cm at 2100m.

Snowpack
Currently, snowpack heights remain well below average at tree line  
for this time of year, in this location, with only 1.0 m of snow at  
2100m.

There was surface hoar forming yesterday to 5mm at tree line and  
below, this new surface is relatively wide spread.
The new snow is overlying a mostly soft unconsolidated snowpack  
except where last weekends temperature inversion created a layer of  
denser snow on sunnier aspects above 1600m.
Snowpack tests did not produce any clean shears between the new and  
old snow surfaces.
Pockets of buried surface hoar from Dec 7th at tree line and below  
are very isolated and currently non-reactive to tests.
Did not find the basal rain crust above 2000m.

Avalanches
Ski cutting only produces very minor sluffing. With the relatively  
warm air temps from this past storm the new snow seems to be sticking  
like glue.
We did not observe any natural avalanches including steep north  
facing or leeward terrain.

Terrain
We have been skiing on moderately angled chute and gully features in  
north facing terrain at treeline. This is where there is enough  
coverage and a slightly firmer base to do some skiing.
Any wind exposed alpine terrain is basically un-skiable and below  
1900 meters it is still survival skiing.
Ski quality was fine with about 15-20 cm of ski pen.




Dana Foster Ludwig - Ski Guide
Snowy Mountain Alpine Tours
Blue River - Clearwater BC
P 250 674 2988
www.snowymountain.ca




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/mcr/attachments/20101211/0b18a253/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: DSC02796.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 435469 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/mcr/attachments/20101211/0b18a253/attachment-0001.jpg>