Nov 14, 2015, Helio-Stoke at Heliotrope Ridge

One cm of snow at the heliotrope parking lot quickly turned into 30 centimeters of new snow at 5000 ft. Looks like this area fared well with the freezing levels on Friday night. The new snow was well bonded to the rain layer and we saw no signs of instability except for very isolated pockets of wind slab on  northeast facing slopes (NWAC is right on about that in their blog post from today). Coverage is good above 5000 feet with only occasional sharks lying in wait in wind scoured areas. The best skiing was right at tree line where we had the best visibility. We climbed to 6900' before following the tracks of a previous party down. We did see a few open crevasses higher up.

All told, there were three groups at Heliotrope today, all of whom skied the same small area due to visibility challenges. With lighter snow tomorrow the skiing could be really good with better visibility. The road is still clear. There were 2" at the trailhead when we left.

The bonus of the day was seeing a ptarmigan foraging below the glacier.