Dec 23, 2007, Skyline Ridge, near Stevens, Snowpit

I climbed up the cattrack for a couple early laps, knowing that conditions were going to deteriorate by the afternoon.  A couple of dense inches on top of a foot or two of nice cold snow.  Not too many turns required, but still pretty fun and ecscapable.  I headed back up to the ridge beyond skyline lake for lunch.  No heading over the north side this time.  Alone, yellow light terrain, red light weather....it was still tempting.  I could see (again) how bad decisions start to grow.  I got out my shovel and saw to put something productive in motion.

Pit at 5200 feet.  N aspect, just over crest of ridge.  Slope about 20-25 degrees.
The fresh deposits were mostly columns and dendrites -- it was just puking them!    The Dec rain crust was about 170 cm inches below the surface.  0-15 cm was frsh, dense, warm.  15-80 was fresh, light and cold. 80-160 was soft-med, increasing dense with depth.  Below this was 5-10 cm of very sugary, non-cohesive facetted snow, om top of the rain crust.  the first few cm of the crust were somewhat facetted as well.  Very easy sheer and 2 tap compression in dense surface layer, and at base of cold, fresh snow, but both with poor (irregular) sliding surfaces.  The lower 80 cm generally moved as a unit, with moderate shovel sheer and/or 3 hard whacks. more imporatantly on a very smoth sliding surface.  the blocks slid easily into the pit, even on this low angle.

I skiing back down to the parking lot in snow that was getting way too deep and dense to even try to turn.