Quick report
Beautiful morning in the Alpental Valley! We observed 2-4" of new snow at the trailhead up to around 4000' with a dramatic increase in HST to 10-14" at 5200'. Starting at 0700, lower elevation surface snow was moist with plenty of rollerballs and debris from yesterday afternoon's warm up. This changed rapidly as we ascended with the new snow above 4200' drier with a density inversion ~3" down. The density inversion was not that noticeable skiing down, but ski quality declined significantly below 4200'. We saw lots of D0.5-D1 natural wet loose activity from yesterday, as well as 3 wind slabs in the Upper Chair Peak Basin on NE and E aspects below cliffs/ridgelines. Looking at Chair Peak North Slopes, there were plenty of signs of wind loading with old tracks filled in on the ridgeline and obvious pillowy wind deposits. Zero wind whatsoever throughout our whole tour. Broken cloud cover to start the day prevented the sun from doing any damage when we left the area around 0930 though it was certainly getting warm.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- 30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Avalanche
- Size
- D2 R2
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 5800 ft
Probable natural D2 wind/storm slab in the Upper Chair Peak basin, there was an inch or two of new snow on the debris so likely occured Thursday afternoon (maybe during the warm up?)