Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Collapsing in meadows on all aspects at upper elevation. We did not venture onto slopes above 30 degrees but suspect we would have encountered collapses and potentially avalanching on steeper slopes.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 30
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- n/app
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Dense cold cloud until about 6500' then sunny skies above it. Below 6500' a rime event was occuring. Very light winds at the upper elevation.
Snowpack
Our focus today was to look around on east to south to west aspects to try to learn more about the distribution of November facets. We found a significantly shallower snowpack on southern aspects with depths at 8000' averaging 1.5 feet. In shaded pockets, well developed facets exist near the ground. In more open areas, we did not find a significant weak layer on south aspects.
There is a pencil hard crust about 6 inches down on all solar aspects, likely from the break in the last storm on 12-9. We did not see faceting directly around the crust but all snow above the crust is actively faceting.
At the surface on all aspects in open areas, there is significant surface hoar growth with some approaching 2cm tall.