David Rosenberg

Logan » Beaver Creek » Amazon Face

Beaver Creek / CROWBAR Course

Despite pervasive high and extreme danger on steeper, avalanche-prone terrain elsewhere in the Bear River Range, we saw very stable snow conditions on lower-angled, treed and meadow-ed areas at Beaver Creek while setting the CROWBAR course Friday and holding the race Saturday. Final route maps and elevation profiles are posted at http://CrowbarSkiRace.org. Most of the course is low-angle (less than 25 degrees) with higher slope angles of 30 degrees on a few localized slopes. The two boot packs at the top of two race division climbs were about 50' vertical and 200' feet in length and had slope angles of 30-35 degrees. Other than surface slough, we observed no movement in the snow despite numerous active stomping, side stepping, ski cuts, cornice cuts, and post holing along and below the main ridge lines by 9 volunteers who set the course Friday and the approximately 45 racers and 15 volunteers who skied the course Saturday. We did not observe any snow instability or slides in the vicinity of the course either day. On Friday, upper elevation surface snow was powdery on the afternoon ski out and manky lower down. Saturday, surface snow was saturated and skiing in the main descent tracks was challenging. The skiing was much more fun on untracked snow.

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