Better late than never.
After hearing tales of last year's powdery slopes and moldy yurt walls, Anastasia and I couldn't pass up the chance to join Andy, Mica, Kirsten, Nate, Todd and Murray (and Tundra, canine wunderkind) on a New Year's return trip to the Qua Yurt, 20 logging road miles outside Ymir in southeast BC.
What should have been a powderfest was somewhat dampened by the results of our test pits:
Snowpack depth between 4 and 6 feet, with 8 inches of sugar over ground beneath a 1/2" ice lens. Significant slabs of 12 and 18" thickness, buried around 18" down and 36" down respectively. The uppermost layer was very reactive (RB1, Q1; CT5, Q1). We had a number of failures of the entire snowpack (CT11 and CT0, 26 degree and 37 degree slopes) over the course of a few days worth of pit digging. This is all buried under more new snow, falling under very cold temps. Frequent whoomphing on low angle (25 degree) slopes.
It was bitterly cold (compared to the Cascades, at least) and the pitches we were able to ski were barely long enough to warm us up as we climbed them for our laps, so we got about 4500 feet of skiing in for the entire trip. Part of that was because the snowpack is about 3 feet behind normal for this time of year, so the tree skiing was still littered with rocks and brush in many areas. We also had to hump our big backpacks in about 1800 feet from the snowmobile drop-off -- a touch more than the 500 feet most of us were planning on.
Nonetheless, it was a fantastic trip for the company, the beautiful terrain and the delicious food (bratwurst, jambalAYA, bbq pork and lasagna). The yurt could be a little better thought out and the operation isn't smoothly oiled, but the terrain is amazing. I'd certainly return in a more stable snowpack.
Yurt Wars (right click to save)
I have to say that all the snowpack testing is music to a parent's ears. Gotta have Marcus's mom read this, after she devoured the avalanche book while sitting on the john in Seattle last year ... oops! Did I say that???
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