[MCR] South Purcells

[Public Mountain Conditions Report]

Hi,

I spent the weekend skiing in the Dewar Creek drainage in the very
southern part of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy. Here's a summary of
the conditions we found:

In the valley bottoms (~1500m) and on protected slopes below treeline
the surface hoar layer buried on Jan 27 is prevalent and very prominent,
but is only down about 15-20cm. This overlying snow is quite faceted and
has minimal slab properties. This layer was failing and propagating in
flat terrain, but interestingly it sounded more like glass tinkling than
whumpfing because it is so shallow.

This surface hoar gets smaller with increasing elevation, while the
amount of snow overlying it increases. At treeline it was down about
30cm, but again the snow above did not show much in the way of slab
development. I couldn't get it to propagate as a slab when ski cutting
steep rolls, instead the faceted surface snow would sluff down to the
surface hoar layer. At this elevation the total snowpack was a decent
190-200cm but it felt generally quite weak and facetted when probing
around.

The surface hoar diminishes above treeline and is replaced by recently
buried, faceted windslab. There was a thin suncrust on most solar
aspects at all elevations. A few cm of recent convective storm snow made
for surprisingly good ski quality higher up, and the older facetted
surface lower down was also very good, as long you stayed off the sun
exposed slopes.

The snow stability is good at all elevations for the time being, but
this will change if we ever get a significant dump of snow, particularly
at the lower elevations where the surface hoar is well preserved.

Jeff Volp
ACMG Ski Guide
Kimberley, BC 




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