Damian's weather diary

I'm going to make this the last of my daily weather study-plot entries. This is the 4th season completed with about 100 online observations per season. The database is growing and so it seems is the habit that I have formed. For next season I will have re-structured this entire blog to make it easier to use and more enjoyable to visit. However before then I have another solid 2 months of local backcountry skiing in what will hopefully be an excellent spring. Today we still have 136cm of snow outside my house and as the season morphs from mountain life to farming in the valley, I will post an occasional update on conditions and happening on my tours. As circumstances would have it, I unexpectedly have 15 days worth of supplies for one person in one of my favoirite areas, so fate has decided where I will be spending most of my time.

As for yesterday, we completed a variation on of my favourite traverses in the valley with a total of 2100m vertical skiing. Northerly aspects still appear to have a clearly defined 50cm deep slab that in places is not very well bonded with the lower rain crust at all. One leg of our tour took us to a 1900m peak that after careful investigation, we decided to turn our back on in favour of alternate terrain under 35 degrees. I think we could have milked the safe spots on that particular steep slope from the summit, however in doing so we would have known one thing for certain: we were skiing on a thick slab with a recent history of being very unstable. Plan B removed that undeniable uncertainty from our day. In fact, on the way to plan B, I found some shooting cracks that confirmed that the problem still lurked, and was difficult to predict on isolated terrain features.