Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
Here is a quick video of my wife's snowpit test plus observations from some friends we ran into. It seemed like a good way to present what's going on in the snowpack right now.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Everywhere we skied today, your ski pole would consistently sink through the soft surface slab and suddenly fall into the airy depth hoar. This slabby feel continues to be nerve-wracking because its a constant reminder of what monsters lurk in the basement. Stepping off the skis you would instantly sink to the ground and trailbreaking in the thinner snowpack areas, you would sink to the ground.</p> <p>Our snowpit tests consistently showed a poor snowpack structure with columns either difficult to isolate or they would collapse easily with wrist taps or elbow taps. The Extended Column tests showed propagation with medium taps on clean shears. There was less collapsing than I was expecting with this sketchy snowpack but some of our party members felt some large ones. Needless to say, we stayed off the steep terrain but we occasionally jumped on small test slopes and rollovers with low consequences just to see if they would respond. </p> <p>The added weight of graupel today will exacerbate the problem and keep this layer active. Expect more avalanches triggered in the backcountry tomorrow. Of course the problem exists, as we have been saying forever it seems, on the slopes that face the north half of the compass plus east facing slopes. Keep slope steepness under about 33 degrees including locally connected terrain.</p> <p>With added graupel today, expect graupel sluffing on Monday along with some wind slabs along the upper elevation ridges. It seems like the wind was very elevation dependant with very laminar flow and stong wind along the peaks and much less wind down off the peaks</p>
Graupel fell throughout the day and slowly added up to about 5 inches by the time we left around 4:30. Densities seemed to increase through the day but the snow had not become upside down yet. The riding conditions were superb--best of the year so far for me. Northerly facing slopes have a total snowpack depth of around 70 cm to a meter in the deepest locations. Other aspects are still very bony.