Lawinenlagebericht

Selkirk Mountains

Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center
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Lawinengefahr

Sat
Hochgebirge
1 · Gering
Waldgrenze
1 · Gering
Unterhalb
1 · Gering
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Veraltet — dieser Lagebericht ist 4 years ago abgelaufen. Du siehst vergangene Verhältnisse, nicht den aktuellen Bericht.

Kernpunkte

Today, be on the lookout for newly formed wind slabs sitting on the surface of the snow..The most likely place to find wind slabs will be in isolated, open areas near and above treeline.  There's plenty of stable snow out there to play on. If you can stay off of wind effected snow today, you'll do a good job managing the avalanche problem.

Lawinenprobleme

  • Wind Slabs

    • Hochgebirge
    • Waldgrenze
    • Unterhalb der Waldgrenze
    Wahrscheinlichkeit
    Possible
    Größe
    1–2

    Surface snow is readily available for shuffling.  Winds will build cohesive slabs in specific upper elevation areas. Slabs could be more sensitive where it overlies recent surface hoar or sun crust. Recognize windslabs today by watching for: firm over soft, recent drift pillows, or snow surface rippling.

    (1/5/2023)

    Jeff Thompson holding the top layer of what appears to be a wind effected layer of snow with traces of facects   

    Baldy Mountain 5100' 

Avalanche Discussion

We went to visit a lodge on Baldy Mountain, in the Selkirks, yesterday. We are going to host an Avalanche Level 2 class there next weekend, so we came up to get a lay of the land. Four of us toured up the south side of Baldy and dug two data pits on our journey. The first snowpit was at 4400' on a south facing slope. In that snowpit, the two things that jumped out at me were the prominant crust in the middle of the snowpack, which we've named the "Christmas Tree Crust," and the buried instabilities in the upper portion of the pack. 

The Christmas Tree Crust is pretty obvious in the snowpack up until 5000' where it fades away in some locations. From 2000'-4500', the crust is dominating the middle of the snowpack. Fortunately, the crust isn't very reactive right now. Of course, that could change, but for now we aren't seeing failure happen on the crust. Temperature gradients in that the crust area of the snowpack indicate that the crust may be breaking down, but only time will tell. We'll continue to keep an eye on it through the next couple weeks.

There are instabilities in the upper portion of the snowpack that are worth mentioning. One of those instabilities is a buried surface hoar layer from last Thursday night. It has been hit or miss trying to find how widespread it is. In the Selkirks, it's not hard to find in isolated pockets near treeline or slightly above. It doesn't seem to be aspect driven as much as elevation driven. Today, I'm not concerned with the surface hoar layer because of how close it is th the snow surface. There's a good chance that the surface hoar layer will become more of a concern as more snow falls on it.

Keep making public observations! Does anyone get into the northern Selkirks? A snowpack update from up north would be pretty awesome! Anyone?Anyone?

Thanks again for using the new OBSERVATION PLATFORM! If you haven't seen it yet, check it out-  https://www.idahopanhandleavalanche.org/observations#/view

 

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