3 Feb - creamy smooth

Today's tour was to 2100m and away from the wind that seemed to be hammering parts of the Happo ridge zone. Clearly on all aspects we saw (E, S and N) there has been a lot of wind in the last few days, however the small amount of snowfall last night smoothed it over with dense cream and the skiing was fantastic on S and SE aspect treeless terrain to 30 degrees or a little more. For a change, it was more enjoyable than just deep powder, and for me personally, better than deep powder at least for now. The sun was out a little, temps were near -10C and winds not so bad at all below 2100m. Very good touring conditions without the 'hassle' of deep trail breaking. Looking at the snowpack we did not find any evidence of a buried sun crust at that altitude in the top 120cm. The dominant feature of the pack, and prevalent avalanche problem right now, was wind slab. There has been plenty of wind that has moved plenty of snow. Isolated and small steep convex rolls that had been cross loaded produced very small slab avalanches. We saw a day old Size 2 slab from about 1850m on a steep south aspect, and Rob sent me today's photo from the south side of the Happo ridge. That's a big slab avalanche and steep complex southern terrain at about 1500m. Basically, heavily textured, steep midslope treeline terrain has windslab on it. I'm sure you'll find it elsewhere as well, though I suspect that most higher alpine wind blown snow sublimated into the cosmos.

Rapid settlement of the recent storm snow at lower altitudes. Our high water content warm coastal pack doesn't stay fluffy for long.

The Japan Avalanche Network has released an updated avalanche bulletin this morning. Remember to click on the summary info for much more details