Quick report
- Aspect
- West
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3048 m
- Slope Angle
- 25°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>I didn't personaly collapse or crack anything but most other red flags were there. </p> <p>Snow structure was poor with about 2 feet of new snow sitting on weak facets near the ground. </p> <p>Noted slide adjacent to Twin Lakes Pass that broke to the ground and took all the new snow with it. Another smaller new snow slide was also visible on the Twin Lakes side of Honeycomb.</p>
The snow structure here was almost identical to what Greg Gagne reported at Cathrine's Pass. About 20cms of early November facets, mixed snow from mid-month, then lots of storm snow from the past two days.
I also looked at little at south and east faces. South facing near the top of TLP had storm snow, then a melt freeze crust capping some facets.
Hand pits in flat safe east areas near the top of the TLP slide below not surprisingly showed snow snow over facets.
This is the same slide as the photo posted on Twitter earlier today. I did not create a new avalanche observation for this since I'd assume it has already been entered.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Early season facets - I like Greg's term "USAW facets" - plus lots of new snow have created classic early season slab instabilities. The storm slab is about 2 feet deep which a common depth for human triggered avalanches involving facets.</p> <p>I didn't ski anything steep enough that new snow could be a concern by itself. I'm sure that would be possible but my primary concern related to new snow is that it adds load that can create avalanches involving deeper persistent weak layers.</p>
New snow was in pretty good shape - good density and not wind affected but more is needed to cover rocks.