Quick report
While the poor structure is on its way to healing and becoming less dangerous, it is not there yet. The overall poor structure coupled with a Sudden Collapse test result leads me to believe we still have a Persistent Slab problem.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 32
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- 4500
- Recent Snowfall
- 5
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Overcast skies, wet snow/rain, warm air temps, calm wind.
Snowpack
I observed rain runnels on the snow surface. I dug a pit at 5300' on a west aspect and found 120cm/4ft of snow. I was surprised to find that the rain had only saturated down 15cm/6in. The snowpack has many layers of melt-freeze crusts with dry snow in between. The weak sugary snow at the base is moist and beginning to consolidate. I performed an Extended Column Test (ECT) and Compression Test (CT). Both tests showed low energy failures where the uppermost melt-freeze crust met the snow beneath it. When I continued loading the CT column it failed at the 19th tap. The whole column popped and dropped just above a Knife hard crust in the November/December snow. See the attached snowpit graph for more information.