8 Feb - powder

Happy faces today after a long hike in (and a hike out) of a moderate angled tree area in Otari with 30-40cm new snow over the slowly freezing rain slush beneath. We skied from 1350m down to 900m and saw no direct evidence of instability, although we had very limited range of vision. At 1000m the rained-on snow is deeply soaked and still yet to freeze. Below that altitude it is weak structureless wet snow under the new storm snow. The winds were moving pretty swiftly mostly from the west with transport and likely accumulation of wind slab along ridges and cross loading gullies. Higher up on steeper slopes the new snow was only 25cm due to wind, and our skis were hitting rain crust. Lower down on gentler terrain the wind had been lighter with deeper snow up to 40cm. Good skiing, but a long walk.