Quick report
- Aspect
- Northwest
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Wind Loading, Cracking, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2804 m
- Slope Angle
- 35°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Only two of all the red flags existed today</p>
we only dug a quick pit lower down where we were skiing, new snow is sitting on a rime crust that seems to be deteriorating, failed on CT 15, but would not propagate, but overall we have a very shallow (75 CM) and weak snowpack for January. Winds continued to smoke as we left
Weather and visibility improved in lower elevation by early afternoon, but all the action is going on up higher
New snow seemed to come in two layers, a little denser on the lower layer
a look at the snow down lower showing basic structure without slabs on top
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>seems like the new snow tipped the scale and reactivated persistent slabs in wind loaded terrain, we did note some cornice fall on our way home, but visibility still limited a good look around</p> <p>winds were howling and moving a lot of snow</p>
high variability in density, it goes without saying, given the sizeable avalanche we triggered today (see Craig and Trents ob), things would change within 10' as you approach the more exposed terrain. One minute it was punchy 4 finger new snow, quickly changing to 1 finger hard wind slab as you approached suspicious terrain. On our first approach this morning the machines would punch through the new snow and try to auger into the sandbox faceted snow near the ground, trail breaking was a little better if the older crust would support you but if you got near trees or logs, we were punching through on skis in a "wallowfest" (Craigs term).
New snow has added load to persistent slabs, we did not experience any collapses until we approached the more exposed terrain. Things just seemed to escalate quickly, first a change in the snow to a stiffer state, then quickly after that the only collapse we felt, then approaching the Little Meadow bowl, we triggered it remotely.
Our discussions today at first noted that we did not yet had a widespread slab, but that quickly changed as we got more into the increasing winds. With very low visiblility, and our remote release of a slab, we retreated lower elevation and sheltered terrain, with no other activity noted in that area.