Quick report
- Aspect
- Southwest
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2682 m
- Slope Angle
- 34°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>No collapsing noted on south and west facing upper elevation terrain or along Cornice Ridge. Still many slopes facing the northern quarter of the compass that I'm not willing to hop on.</p>
There is more snow structure in south facing terrain, with a couple fairly hard crusts in the upper layers and generally more cohesive snow than on more north facing slopes in the region where the snow is structureless and rotten throughout in many places.. But there are also layers made up of very weak faceted snow as well and we won't be able to rule out avalanche potential on these slopes once they are loaded up by midwinter storms.
I'm still unwilling to venture onto steep upper elevation slopes, especially those facing north and northeast.
Snowpack
The couple inches of new snow helped snow surface conditions... 12-23-2013 rime-crust on the surface in places and shallowly buried on south and west facing slopes. The fresh snow was blown into gullies and depressions though, and I found some nice shallow powder conditions in between patches of rime-crust in the Grandfather Bowl Area.