Sunshine backcountry for season pass holders Off-Trail skiing on 5-Ma

Participants: Evan, Ivan, Bob, Bill

Arrived at a busy Sunshine parking lot at 8:40. Arrival of 3 buses resulted in very long lineup for gondola. But when finally arrived at village there were only a few getting on each chairlift. Up Standish chairlift.

Thanks to report from Fred H we ruled out many slopes and picked the burn off east side of Twin Cairns. Could see strong wind affect on many slopes.

Left top of Standish at 9:50 skiing down west side. Then installed skins and took low level route to top of burn slope. Looked like we were first in a week.

Weather was mostly patchy thin clouds with some nice sunny breaks. Light wind, -5C. Had 2 short micro snowfalls and one mini graupel flurry.

Snow pit and shovel shear were positive with 4 slippage levels. Primary was down 45 cm where moved a combined 1 cm forward on hits #14 & #17. No movement or failure on January 24th surface of 3 layers of hoar/ice/facets which is down 62 cm. Pit profile attached.

4 short runs on burn; didn't go all way down because of conditions. 1.5 cm powder on ridgetop increasing to 10 cm on slope. A return to resort boundary and ski down green run to gondola.

5 hour 48 minute day. 7.5 km with 440 meters vertical up and 680 meters down.