Quick report
- Aspect
- Northeast
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2865 m
- Slope Angle
- 38°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Biggest Red Flags today were the potential for wind transport and increased wind loading throughout the day. We also found the poor snowpack structure difficult to trust on Northerlies. </p>
Photo of our 9,400ft NE facing pit. Trent points to the transition of Hard over Weak.
The video is our PST.
Video of our "artificially enhanced" Rutschblock test. Again no significant failure among the testing guidelines.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Despite an ECTX at 9400 NE facing on the Brighton Perimiter, we all felt a bit unsettled from the continued poor snowpack structure. Yes, the facets are 'wet', but they are still facets and continue to demonstrate scary characteristics. We performed an Extended Column Test with an ECTX on a 38 degree NE facing slope at 9,400ft with over a meter of slab on top of the buried weak layer. Out of curiousity, we devated from protocol, and artificially reduced the slab to about 20 inched of slab on top of the week layer. This only took a few good wacks to get full failure and propagation on the PWL. Indicative of what could happen on a shallow rocky area. </p> <p> </p> <p>Wanting more, we then dove into a Propagation Saw Test and isolated a column of 135cm and got a 35/135 to the end with column crashing out. </p> <p> </p> <p>We couldnt hold back and dove into our bag of tricks to then pull out a Rutschblock. We did not get a failure within the testing guidelines, but we artificially enhanced the weaklayer with a little help with some failure initiation with Trent's mighty saw blade. This lead to a fine example of what these deep slab avalanches can look like when triggered in the right spot and what we will continue to epect with increased loading over the Xmas Holiday. </p>
Surface snow was a mixed bag of Melt Freeze crust on anything with a kiss of sun. Dense loose power skiing on Northerlies. Snow From last weekends storm seems to have settled with some pretty good sized snowcones around Brighton's giant trees.