Peak 3

The snowpack in the Chugach State Park continues to have a poor structure of a hard windslab on top of a weak, sugary, faceted base. Similarly to what we saw at Arctic Valley last week- the areas in the Chugach State Park where there is enough consistent snow coverage to ski are the most likely places to trigger an avalanche. The snowpack structure was predominately a pencil hard or one finger windslab on top of fist hard weak, faceted sugary snow.  We noted two layers of facets at this location too- the near surface facets right beneath the windslab and larger (2mm) faceted grains at the base of the snowpack.  We dug two snowpits and both snowpits had propogation at the facets at the base of the snowpit (ECTP26 and ECTP16). 

We recommend sticking to low angle terrain and if you do step out into steeper terrain- stick to good travel habits by having good eyes on your ski partners the whole time and traveling one at a time down a slope.