Sweet November Skiing

Scotty and I headed up to Garabaldi Provincial Park after that big dump of snow. Our plans were to do a bit of skiing around Elfin Lake under a beautiful bluebird sky.

We left the parking lot at around 9:30 and didn't stop skiing till we reached the hut about 3 1/2 hours later. On the way we encountered much freshness and couldn't believe the quality of the snow. The closer we came to the hut tho more we noticed a thin wind slab forming throughout the snowpack.

There were point release avalanches on the northeast facing slopes beneath lil Diamond Head. We figured that we might as well ski up, take a look and dig a pit. It turned out that the snow falling from the trees had caused the avalanches and when we tested our pit the stability of the snow pack was quite good. Regardless we decided to play it safe and stick in the trees.

We left Elfin lake at 4:20 and skied back in the dark to the parking lot. Our one big lession, besides the avalanches, was that it isn't worth skiing out to the hut unless your planning on spending the night. The skiing around red heather is much better! Lesson learned.