Deep Creek Snow Report

We toured up deep creek gaining the ridge via safe travel paths and skied moderate terrain with dense snow conditions staying in the strom layer of dense fast snow. At the steep bench at the bottom we chose specific terrain to moderate our exposure to terrain traps and significant starting zones in the gully and convex roll overs. No signs of cracking, whoomfing or instability either breaking trail up or skiing down. The snow skied much deeper in lower tree protected terrain and shallower at the top of the ridge from wind compression. On a second lap we ventured further on the ridge top where significant signs of wind loading and transport existed in the trees with large deposits and obvious wind created features. These did not show signs of stability while traversing and ski kicks on small test slopes.  On our second lap we traversed to a steeper rocky location to observe terrain and found a very large well developed cornice overhanging a slope with significant wind loading happening.  A small cornice kick dropped a small piece without much effort with no reaction that slid on the surface. A second large ski kick one step toward the cornice cracked horizontally across the cornice 4 or 5 feet back from the edge and 20+ ft out 5 feet deep. This very large cornice pitched forward onto the slope triggering the entire pocket from edge to edg and extended across a slope aspect change and across the distance of the slope horizontally. The crown was 60' wide from 6" to 18" deep in wind slab snow and ran the length (400') of the slope through mulitple pockets of trees clearing them of snow and blowing a good cloud of snow. This was a very large cornice propogation based on the location of the ski kick and distance of the fracture through the cornice which created alot of pressure on the slope below in one big blow.  

We backed away from the slope after a bit of debriefing about the results and returned to moderate angle slopes below 30 degrees in the trees for some good pow skiing.