[MCR] Monashee Mtns- NE of Craigellachie Ck and the Gorge ski touring/logging area

Spent the past five days in the Monashees, west of the Perry River, North of the TCH and NE of the Craigellachie ck/Gorge ski touring area.

The only significant weakness we found in the snow pack is the surface hoar and facets from Dec 9th. We had no consistent results in our snow pack tests and with lots of aggressive skiing as there just wasn't a slab on top of the layer yet. Thursday afternoon, we finally started finding enough of a settled slab to get some cracking and slight propogation at treeline. No avalanches were triggered but it was enough to keep us from wandering round above the cliffs where we were supposed to be doing a cliff rescue practise. Tests on friday showed little change in the weak layer or slab character. We managed to get lots of great skiing in with some reasonable terrain choices.

My guess is that we may be in for a short avalanche cycle if we get some moderate precipitation this weekend. My hope is that the warm snowpack will round this layer out and it will stop bugging us within a few days. Time will tell and obviously it could be very different in other parts of the Monashees.

Good skiing and early season coverage to around 1500m. Below this it gets a little bushy.

Larry Stanier
ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide
laristan@telus.net