Unfortunately Firm - 1/11/26

Guest blog by Christian Eaton

The forecast on Saturday night had us optimistic about new snow potentially bonding well with the melt-freeze layer observed on Saturday. We were excited as we ascended the Gulf of Slides trail with a fresh blanket of snow. This excitement quickly turned to disappointment as we booted up Gully 3 on a breakable crust layer. We discussed sticking to the plan of skiing Dodges with the hopes that the different aspect paired with the southeast winds of the storm would present us with a nice fresh layer in Dodges. After a walk across Boot Spur with a spectacular view, we looked at Dodges only to realize we were incorrect. The conditions in Dodges appeared to match that of Gully 3.

We pivoted to Duchess because the top had the most soft snow of all of the lines we looked at. We dropped in with two soft turns. These soft turns quickly turned to the same breakable crust that was found in Dodges and Gully 3. Pure survival skiing got us to the bottom. Chokes were just wide enough to side slip through. 

Bottom line; Firm, barely edgeable crust was prevalent in all gullies from E to S. Hopefully others found better conditions than we did.