Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
I took a fantastic client out to ski on Chicken Wing. We started from 395 and skinned across a fairly supportive rain crust from last night's storm. We hit the snow line after crossing the road at 8600 ft and the snow quality got really good. When we crossed the 9000 ft line we started to observe evidence of wind loading. The surface snow stiffened and we started to see some localized cracking around our skis. Every one of my hand pits failed underneath the rain crust from the Saturday rain storm on a layer of facets. I dug a quick pit and a CT11 and ECTN on that layer of facets. I observed light to moderate snow transport from the southern aspect. We caused cracking only above 9000ft on Chicken Wing when I first started to observe evidence of wind effect on the snow. The cracking extended no more that a meter or so and only occurred when the snow was undercut by a ski track and therefore unsupported.
Weather
- Air Temp
- High temp was above freezing
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 8600
- Recent Snowfall
- 21
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
A nice, warm, windy bluebird day.
Snowpack
There is wind effected snow from this last storm on the top of the 20ish cm dump of new snow. That is sitting on top of the rain crust from this last Saturday. The rest of the snowpack is a mixture of facets. Generally, the facets closest to the crust are well developed and weak and rounds more and more as it decends down to the ground.