Snow report Northern Norway, 02/05/2016

Snow condition

Perfect below the tree line. On average 30 cm of soft snow on a base of 70 cm or more. Above that, extremely inhomogeneous snow thickness of 0.0 to several meters wherever the wind blows. Typical picture: blown-off elevation followed by a huge cornice.

Snow quality

The quality was also totally dependent on the wind. Below the tree line on Friday it was still perfectly packed powder snow, which became a bit heavier from Saturday lunchtime. In alpine terrain On windward sides, hard wind cover (can you call it cover if there's only hard snow underneath?) or hard snow; on leeward sides, i.e. eastern slopes, also mostly blown off (!) - very compact powder snow.

There is no situation report for this area. On the approach to the hut on Friday on the flat, we caused large areas (100m x 100m) to collapse, sometimes on our own (low additional load), with a loud boom and noticeable subsidence. If the slopes below the tree line in this area weren't all far too flat for avalanches (and even sensible skiing), I would have given it a tense three or even four. At higher altitudes, I estimated the danger to be somewhat lower, because in my opinion it is extremely unlikely to trigger such hard packed drift snow at all and there are fewer large-scale weak layers due to the inhomogeneous snowpack. Ok, of course you shouldn't jump into an already unstable cornice or anything like that. Threes (especially east exposures).

Overall impression

We did three short tours in two days and even saw something on one of them. Great group, great hut, promising terrain; the tours weren't anything special, but can definitely be seen as the icing on the cake of the whole trip