Harvey Pass current snow condition provided by Paul Kubik

lulululu

Date: 2007.01.20

I skinned up from 365m, about 15min up from the parking lot in Lions Bay. Conditions were crusty until 800m with compact powder above. There were a couple of minor sluffs off the NW bowl below the West Lion but in the usually hair-trigger NE bowl there was no sign of any natural avalanches. I skied most of the way to Harvey Pass but the trail breaking was heavy - 20cm ski pen and 40cm boot pen with a layer of moist, sun-warmed snow above dry powder. Lots of problems with the skins balling up. There were no other tracks all day, I was the only one up there. The ski down through the meadows was consistent, heavy, deep powder but a great run despite the hard work. With the current snowpack in the upper bowl near 3m there are dozens of unskied lines everywhere. Lengthy access and the buried crust are the main problems at present. After the descent, I pretty well had to take off the skis below 750m, which for the last month has been the cutoff line where all of a sudden the snow goes from scant to 1.5m deep.

Winds were light, temps cool but warming with about 40cm of dense new snow in the last couple of storm cycles. My brother reported it briefly warmed on Friday to above freezing at Cypress Bowl and this warming accounts for the surface crust layer at lower elevations. There is one blowdown at knee height on the trail.

Snow Level Summary:

5cm at 365m

10cm at 700m

1.5m at 750m

2.5m at 900m