Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- isolated
Conditions at Waterhouse improved greatly since late last week. There were various layers of new snow which covered the nasty breakable crust from last week about 42 cm down at 8500 ft. Some of the new snow did form soft slabs of F+ and 4f hardness. There were cornices on the ridge, but they were quite small. They were very soft and broke easily. The descent conditions were excellent with only one scrape of a barely covered rock at about 8000 ft. I stomped on two of the small cornices on the ridge. They were all soft slabs over soft snow. One was F snow over 4F, and the other was the other way around. The first collapsed 10 cm down. The second collapsed 20 cm down. Both collapsed on the first stomp.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 30s
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- 6-10
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Beautiful bluebird day with cold temps at start but warm on ascending. The colder temps are preserving the snow.
Snowpack
The near surface snowpack was remarkably consistent at different elevations. On the surface, there is new snow between 6 and 10 cm of F hardness, below which is a F+ layer, then a 4f layer, followed by a much harder crust. At 8500 ft, 8 cm F new snow, under which was F+ down to 28 cm, 4f to 42 cm, then crust underneath. Hand shear failed at 28 cm quite easily, resistant planar.