Quick report
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Although the snow profiles on north facing slopes around 10,000' were occasionally producing propagating fractures on Extended Column tests, the tests were inconsistent from place to place. So there is a lot of spatial variability in this early season snowpack. People were getting away with skiing many of the north facing steep slopes in the area without triggering avalanches. So I suspect that most of the slopes are dormant at this time due to lack of recent loading with the exception of some of the higher terrain that had some wind loading in the past couple days.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>There is a buried layer of depth hoar under almost all of the north through east facing terrain above about 10,000'. It is quite inconsistent from place to place and it appears to be mostly dormant in most areas as people are skiing many of the slopes without incident with the exception of a human triggered avalanche two days ago on Baldy Shoulder from recent wind loading on that weak layer.</p>
Still some soft powder on north facing slopes above about 9,500' but damp snow below that elevation. There is very little snow on south facing slopes and about 2 feet on upper elevation north facing slopes. There is some wind damage on the very exposed slopes above 10,000'.