Two Bowls, South Fork of Eagle River, Chugach State Park
Weather
- Air Temp
- 33
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Rain Elevation
- Not observed
- Recent Snowfall
- None
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Broken skies, no precipitation, occasional light breeze from the SE
Snowpack
Our focus today was on the sun affect on a primarily winter snowpack. We noticed a 2"-3" sun crust thickest on steep southerly aspects, which softened throughout the day and turned to corn on our ski descent. We dug several hand pits and two high-elevation pits. The sun crust was 2" thick and was noticeably thicker on steep southerly slopes (up to 4" thick). We noted that most snowpack snow grains were rounding.
We conducted three ECT tests in our higher elevation pits. We got ECTX in two of our tests and one ECTP19 test result at the top of the rounding depth hoar. We have not seen any avalanches on this layer, but it is a concerning test result and something we are monitoring and keeping track of.