Moose Lake

Recent strong winds have redistributed and drifted snow in the middle and upper elevation and near ridgelines. A notable storm period and snowfall from February 14 to 20 combined with a shorter storm from February 23 to 25 adds up to slab depths of about 2 to 4 feet in most mountain locations. While there has been little snowfall in the last two days, winds have actively redistributed and drifted snow into thicker slabs. These slabs may become reactive and could also stress buried weak layers of surface hoar deeper in the snowpack.

While traveling up in elevation gusty winds increased as we traveled towards ridgetop. We    observed increasing wind affected snow and gusty south winds were depositing snow on northerly aspects. Snow surfaces had soft snow available for transport with ski penetration of snow surfaces varying between about 5 to 10cm.  

At 6400 feet on a Northeast aspect near ridgetop we observed a snowpack height of 325 cm. We found a generally right side up hardness profile in the upper snowpack. At this location we observed three different buried surface hoar layers: 

• February 22 (size 4 - 6mm) down 20 cm from the surface.
  • Snowpack tests showed CT 12 BRK and RP results, ECTN 20 and PST 30/100 SF.

• V-Day (February 14, size 6mm) down 75 cm.
  • PST results revealed a saw cut length of 42 cm with propagation to the end of column (PST 42/100 END). No other results were observed on this layer.

• January 28 (up to size 10mm) down 100cm from the surface.
  • Column tests showed CT 14,16 SP and PST 32/100 END.  The 1/28 SH sat on 2 cm thick Pencil hard Mid-January crust.

The exception to the right side up snowpack structure found in the snowpit location was specific areas of wind drifted and pillowed locations. Deeper in the snowpack, below the Mid-January crust, small (0.5 - 1mm) rounding facets were observed to be 1F- to 1F hard. These small facets are over 1m (~3ft) deep below the surface and are below harder rain crusts. The main weak interfaces of concern currently deal with new wind drifted snow and the aforementioned buried surface hoar layers.