February 17, 2003, Heather Ridge

Weather was surprisingly good, periods of cloudy/foggy weather but mostly sunshine or filtered sun.  6-8" of new, relative dense snow above the varied old surfaces.  Took a few short runs in north facing woods then skied down towards Yodelin from Heather Ridge.  It must have rained/misted very slightly before starting to snow Sunday as I found a very small, very weak crust above the old faceted snow on north facing slopes.  On sun exposed slopes, the new snow was directly overlaying the sun crust from last week.  Skiing was quite good, on the north side of the ridge one would sink down into the old snow, stopping somewhere above the very old crust from late January/early Feb, on sun exposed slopes it was the new powder above the more recent sun crust.  Snow seemed relatively stable, I was only able to set off small, isolated slabs on steep, wind loaded test slopes, rutchblock failed on a hard step onto the block plus a weight down from the knees (north side of Heather Ridge, just below the ridge).  Slopes receiving sunshine yesterday most likely developed a sun crust, it was above freezing at 2pm in the sun atop Heather Ridge and quite warm down at the PCT.