Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- isolated
Was quite lovely to drive all the way to MP20 and park at the Eldorado Trailhead. Biggest takeaway for our group was that the crust layers from the recent high pressure spells are very much down there and there's weak snow between them. We felt sugary, loose snow between two crust interfaces of varying depth depending on micro-terrain (but figure the top one is 01/09 and the deeper one is sometime earlier). Snow generally did not seem to be bonding consistently to it. We did run into another party that successfully summited Eldorado, and another that topped out Klawatti and Austera, so there were people stepping out into bigger terrain without incident. Felt a few whoompfs while skinning low angle, post-glacial terrain in the Eldorado Creek drainage. Dug a few hand pits, all resulting in clean planar fracture on the crust layer from the last storm interface. One hand pit broke sudden planar on isolation. Saw a D2 crown on the southern flanks of the Triad from a distance. Debris looked from the most recent storm. Cracking and whoompfing was isolated to steeper, more convex slopes which we chose to stay away from the rest of the day after getting a few in the morning hours.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Morning started with high clouds and a thick valley cloud. As the day wore on, the sun broke out in intense spells and greenhoused much of the southern facing snowpack. The clouds were still in and out and there was not a consistent spell of blue sky. Strong northern winds were the biggest takeaway from our group.
Snowpack
Consistent snow begins at the boulderfield. It's a nice transition from trail to skinning pretty quickly. In the morning hours the snowpack showed little evidence of solar input from the day before; aside from a few crusty spots, there was cold snow even down to 4000'. Strong northerlies began around 9AM and continued to rip throughout the day. South facing, lower angle terrain was mostly sheltered from these winds with the exception of high alpine closer to ridgelines. By the end of the day wind affect was felt most everywhere. North facing terrain (the limited terrain we did experience on the icecap) was widely wind affected and starting to show signs of sastrugi. By the end of the day southern aspects held a zipper crust of 0.25-0.5 inches from the solar input throughout the day. Most southern aspects had some level of sun affect.
Avalanche
No avalanches triggered or noticed.