Climbed up to treeline on the West ridge of Mt Chief Pascall today (Wed. Dec. 16th) from the weather station (4100'). 25cm of storm snow in the parking lot at 9:45am, -1.5 deg.
Climbing through the cutblock we observed widespread whumphing and cracking up to 60m long, with a few very small size 1 slabs on steep unsupported features (eg. cutbanks) failing on 20mm surface hoar down 30cm. This was then entraining 3-4cm of well developed facets immediately beneath. We did not find any more surface hoar above the elevation of the cutblock.
At 5550' I remote triggered a size 1 soft slab (fist + hardness) 30m wide x 20cm deep x 40m long which failed within the storm snow. At this location under cliffs the most recent crust was down 90cm.
Ski penetration increased to 30cm near the top of our run (6130') at 1:20pm, with 80cm foot penetration (the crust was down 80cm). At this time we heard the roar of an avalanche that sounded like it came off the peak of Chief Pascall, suspect size 2-3.
We leap-frogged most of the way down our run as it was difficult to maintain speed on anything less than 30 degrees in the heavy snow.
Back at the weather station at 1530 there was another 20cm of new snow since we departed to make 40cm of storm snow. It had warmed up to 0 degrees.
In general the snow was not cohesive enough to propagate a large slab at the elevations we observed, but I suspect this will change as the storm snow quickly settles in the warm temperatures forecast.
Alex Geary
ACMG Assistant Ski Guide
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