Quick report
Loose Wet activity in very steep, rocky terrain with shallow snow cover. Rollerballs and pinwheels. Many Wet Loose slides ran yesterday and more ran today. Wet Loose avalanche activity
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Intense solar radiation, heat felt intense in bowls and on solar aspects.
Snowpack
This area received between 20 an 35 cm of new snow in the quick storm on March 31. Signs of previous snow transport and wind loading during and after the storm are everywhere. However, it seems that the warm temps today and the intense solar radiation caused the snow on northerly aspects to become slightly moist and feel like it is bonding to the pre-storm snow surface. Low angle terrain exposed to the morning sun had a 4 cm P hard crust that softened mid day. NE aspects still held soft snow. Some more wind affected than others.
Avalanche
As we were hiking up the upper NE facing Basin Mountain chute, the steep rocky gullies and couloirs on the E facing main wall was alive with Wet Loose sloughs and slides. We saw and heard at least ten different slides between 1045 and 1200. There were also rollerballs and pinwheels traveling down the main chute but originating out of a SE facing chute at 12'400 ft. I did not see any signs of instability in the recent 25 - 35 cm of new snow on the NE facing side of the chute. Although there was wind deposited snow/ shallow wind slabs, ranging in thickness from 5 cm to 30 cm. The snow felt 'deflated', slightly moist and the wind slab only cracked right around my skis as I broke trail.