Quick report
- Red Flags
- Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>In all my travels today I only experienced collapsing in one meadow just outside of the TH parking lot. It's no secret that the snowpack structure is poor. Outside of a few dry loose avalanches I did not see any signs of recent slab avalanches. I did report an avalanche on Noriega's Face, but it likely happened 3 days ago. I like to keep my recent avalanches within the last 48 hours. </p>
Dry loose above and below the cliffs on Mellenthin. Exactly where you don't want to get caught.
The snow getting damp on a SW aspect by 1230. Likely will be crusted tomorrow. This pulled out really easily with a ski pole basket pulling down on the snow. There was a slick crust under the new snow in this picture.
5 Star powder with Obi getting in on the action.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The PWL's aren't going away in the snowpack for the foreseeable future. I think we will see an uptick of avalanches failing on this layer as soon as the wind starts blowing again. There is a lot of snow available for transport right now waiting to load the north facing starting zones. </p> <p>Until the winds pick back up again this problem with trend down or go away. </p>
Beautiful low density powder sitting right side up. By 1230 the south aspects were getting damp and made really nice snowballs. I'd suspect those aspects to have a shallow crust on them tomorrow. I'd also treat them as suspect where the sun helped to slab up the new storm snow. Especially in areas that have a slick crust under the new snow.