Ross Peak – Propogation in Pit

After weighing our options of where to ski today, my partner and I decided to head towards Ross Peak with the intention of checking out the Banana Couloir. The Brackett Creek road was hardly covered with the new snow and it was not snowing when we left the carpark at 10am, though we could see clouds and precipitation on the ridge. We approach along the road before ducking into the woods and slowly made our way up a ridge before emerging on final approach slope to the top of the Banana Couloir.

We dug a snowpit at an elevation of approximately 8100' on a 34 degree, E facing slope near where the approach got steeper to check the stability before proceeding. We were surprised to find a very shallow snowpack of only ~80cm. We performed an ECT to test the stability of the snowpack. We were mostly concerned with how the new snow was bonding and reacting. However, we got a score of ECTP13 on an old melt-freeze layer approximately 35cm from the ground with a Q1-2 shear quality. We were not expecting this result. Given this information, we decided to not ski any further up the approach slope towards the Banana and instead skied back down the approach gully.

We made our way to Texas Meadows, where we found good snow and good skiing.