Lunch Peak

Widespread storm snow and strong winds over the last 5 days contribute to new snow instabilities. New snow avalanche problems and instabilities are most sensitive during and right after storms. New snow, given time and if not sitting on top of a long lasting weak layer interface, will generally trend toward increasing strength. While the snowpack is in transition phase, continue to use caution in terrain selection. 

cracking mostly perpendicular to between tracks, resistant to cracking ahead of tracks.

While traveling through terrain we observed isolated cracking between our tracks. Snow surfaces, and hardness, varied due to wind effect. At 6400 ridgetop we found recent wind drifts and firm surfaces. Near and below ridgecrest we observed soft yet relatively supportive (shallow ski pen.), and partly varied, snow surfaces on skis. 

Storm snow heights range from 40 - 60cm over a thin crust buried on 3/9. Within the new snow we observed moderate force CT’s, resistant planar or irregular breaks. Overall, the recent new snow has a subtle firm over soft hardness profile. At 6000' on a North aspect we observed a hard force CT with sudden planar result on the 3/9 crust down 60cm from the surface. 

At the same 6000’ N aspect location, the 2/23 rain crust (5cm thick, P-hard) is down 90cm. Below this is 1F+ hard snow. Deeper in the snowpack, but currently not a main concern, is the  JDL (130cm from the surface), with  6-10mm SH, and 1mm ,4F+ hard, rounding facets.