Good not to tour alone

20 Dec 07

Andy and I

Today was satisfying back country time (pictures below). Three casual laps of an easy tree area with the driest snow so far this season. Good stable snow on a SW aspect, 1900m asl, 30 degrees. The light was good, nicely filtered by breaking clouds. The company was also good with Andy and Lars, who are staying at Hakuba Powder Lodging. It was the first time out touring this season not on my own. I talked a lot.

Skinning up gave us a good feel for the solid snow pack: it just became denser as it got deeper. A quick compression test confirmed this with only a medium result (16) 30cm deep on a resistant planar break (and barely that). Early wind from the west started to superficially load the upper region of the ridge and we saw a very small sluff of a few inches of wind accumulation. But the wind eased quickly and conditions remained very favourable.

Medium distance visibility was not good enough to observe any natural avalanche activity from the recent intense snow fall. Although during a quick break in the clouds corniced areas were quite obvious on some ridges running off Norikura.

Lars

Andy

Me