Silver Peak

When I was in this area on Dec 5, the amount a weak surface snow in the 7,000' to 8,000' elevation range was notable. With the approaching storm cycle, I wanted to go back today and see if conditions had changed over the past week. Bottom line, there are still several inches of very weak surface facets above a rain crust in many areas. The weakest snow we observed was on due N aspects, in two different avalanche start zones. One was a ridgetop near treeline start zone near 7,900' and the other was a below treeline start zone near 7,250'.

As we moved off of due N aspects onto more NE to E aspect terrain, the top few inches of the snow were still relatively weak, but not as sugary as what existed on the due north aspects. On the N aspects, there is an efficient rain crust bed surface below the weak layer. The next five days with a possiblilty of three snowfall events will provide the potential to build a problematic slab on top of the weak layer. See video.