Quick report
Nearly a week after the storm, there's still plenty of soft cold snow on all but the sunniest slopes. While we could find signs of wind-transported snow, we didn't see any wind slabs. All in all, it was a beautiful day to explore the mountains!
No obvious signs of instability.Weather
- Air Temp
- 25
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
A beautiful day. Chilly and breezy on ridgelines. A few passing high thin clouds, but mostly sunny.
Snowpack
Cold weather has helped maintain soft dry snow on all but most direct southerly slopes. At the moment this snow is weak and loose with large surface hoar from valley bottom to the ridgeline. Not surprisingly, this resulted in excellent travel conditions on these slopes. On those directly facing the sun, a thin breakable crust formed.
Below the surface, the snowpack is well-settled and generally right-side-up. While we could find a few thin crusts, snowpack tests didn't highlight any weak grains around these layers.
Along exposed ridgelines, there was plenty of evidence of wind-transported snow. Textured surfaces, rime, small cornices, and drifts were common. However, we weren't able to find wind slabs that we could get to crack or fail.
While it was very cold today, you could see a few rollerballs from yesterday's warm and sunny weather. They occurred below rock bands and cliffs on SE-S-SW facing terrain. No wet loose slides were seen.
Avalanche
No recent avalanches observed.