Despite the low cloud, today up along the Happo ridge was as good as you could ever hope for, though photo conditions were terrible! Superb knee deep powder skiing, with no wind until the afternoon, when it started to pickup. That is all Ill say on that. But I will comment further on why conditions were so nice after a word on reality and context, which I think is merited given the large and diverse readership on this page, some of whom may be mislead by my good times: 1. The current snowpack stability will be quite sensitive to increased wind, sunshine and temperatures. Some or all are coming soon. 2. Just because you ski the Happo backcountry along the ridge does not mean you have to ski any of the obvious steep & high consequence complex terrain. Think outside that box. There are lower angle, supported, and lower consequence options available to experienced backcountry skiers who research in advance 3. Just because you ski the Happo backcountry does not mean you have to ski down to the rivers. I didnt today. I climbed back up and returned to the resort via the main ridgeline. 4. However, skiing back down the Happo ridge to the resort is difficult and potentially dangerous in white out, no matter how easy you think it is with good vis. It is very easy to get off track and follow the wrong ridge (usually on the skiers right, and not far from resort) or to ski very quickly into steep avalanche start zones, or over a steep drop. I went off-track by only a little bit today and rather than do a lazy resort-skier traverse through an avalanche start zone with zero visibility to re-gain the ridge, I put on my skins and back-tracked for a few minutes to the ridge, and started again. It is not a place to be lazy in a whiteout, nor the place to rush. If you make an error, fix it, dont make it worse. In the worst case, take your skis off and walk back down the narrow ridge slowly (so long as it isnt ice). Ok, so today and yesterday powder skiing has been deep and good quality in areas usually driven by wind. This is because since the last Siberian storm ended, we have had snowfall from small low pressure cells and lifting of warm masses, rather than driving cold wind and orographic lift and lake effect. This has given the flakes a chance to form and flutter down gently in a low-wind regime, rather than the broken/poorly formed and heavily rimed flakes you get with the huge dump orographic lift Siberian storms. You do not need those big cold storms for good skiing in Hakubas backcountry.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 07:25:24 +0000
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