12 Feb - AST course

I was outside today teaching another AST avalanche course. After 1-2cm/hour snowfall in the morning the clouds cleared and we enjoyed a sunny cool day with plenty of powder around at 1900m above Tsugaike - about 30-40cm of new snow. We had good visibility and did not see any natural avalanche activity at all. We also didn't see any lines on the more popular steep terrain in the area. It looked fantastic, however personally, I wouldn't have skied any of it with avalanches on the mind - perhaps others were of the same opinion? None of it was touched all day. Whilst we had light to moderate winds, over on Happo and Goryu ridges we could see intense wind transport of snow with huge plumes blowing out and loading the terrain on E, S and SE aspects at least. At the same time alpine terrain in our area was being loaded from the SW. As usual the wind here is very localised. The rain crust below tree line does not seem to be breaking down and getting any worse for now, however that is based on limited observations on a south aspect.