Quick report
- Collapsing
- specific
Skinning the ridge we got two large collapses with seemingly no rhyme or reason to where and why as the surface snow was very different in each location. There was a lot of evidence of wind loading and scouring. It was very warm and even at 8000 feet the top of the snow was heating up in the sun. The PWL problem was not obvious and the collapses seemed random, AKA you could be on the layer all day and never see evidence. After looking at the layers in the snow and not immediately identifying a weak layer above the crust, the ECTP was surprising even after feeling some collapses. We started getting collapses around 7500 feet, but we were over that elevation for over an hour and only got two collapses.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
Snowpack
Where we dug our pit, the top layer appeared to be wind deposited snow over storm snow. This caused a collapse in the ECT test but no propagation (ECTN11). The scary layer, and what I imagine caused our collapses, was about 60 cm from the surface. It propagated fully and had clean shear quality (ECTP22). There was some evidence of faceting over the crust but it wasn't obvious until we pulled the block off. This was on a SE facing slope around 8000 feet.