January 10-11, 2004, Kendall Stump

On Saturday Matt and I headed up to Kendall Stump. We were the early birds this day enjoying the trail braking pretty much all the way up. The snow was okay. The top 2 inches were soaked and on top was thin icy crust, not really an issue. Underneath was the nice snow. The run down through the trees was real fun with little  bumps to jump off and little creeks to cross were I got really stucked. We skied down the track we came and for our excitment took a short cut through trees following a showshoetrack. At the trail head we dig out a car and I realised the value of my newly bought metal blade shovel. On Sunday we headed back to the same place realising that it was much colder. So we raced up the now beaten track upwards checking with poles the icy crust. We skipped the Kendall Stump and opted for a shortcut between the track to see how skiable this stuff is. Nearly 2 inches of icy crust made a perfect breakable crust or "Bruchharsch". It was kind of brutal skiing jumping every turn. Matt on his telies did not like it at all and I could not really enjoy it. So we skied down breaking the crust. We took now a longer shortcut towards the trailhead. The icy crust vanished more and more as we lost altitude. At the bottom was no icy crust at all just soaked snow. The snowpits on both days showed a thick layer of almost uniform snow of nearly 1 meter. Below was a 1 inch icy crust. Another 10 inches below was the up to 4 inches thick icy crust of early december. In between those two layers was uniform snow. On the way home after passing the Summit West exit we could see some avalanches on the right side (north). But those consisted only of the top wet snow layer.