Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- specific
I experienced muffled, inobvious collapses at the base of the new snow. These were most apparent in wind-loaded terrain, where they were occasionally accompanied by subtle, visible cracks on the surface.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Low and mid level clouds hung over the mountains throughout the day. There were brief periods of direct and diffuse sunshine, but these did not have a sensible impact on the snow I was traveling through. Periods of snowfall occurred throughout the day. The most intense precip I saw approached S4, but this was short-lived. Storm totals of 12-15cm at the Ranger Station, increasing to 30-35cm along the moraine and 45+cm as I climbed into upper elevations.
Snowpack
Lots of wind transport going on today. I observed significant, active deposition of new snow in most of the avalanche starting zones that I could see. This was occurring intermittently for a significant portion of the day. At my exit from the field around sunset, there were still huge piles of snow to blow around.
I did not dig any formal snowpits. Based on significant probing and hand-pitting, and recent observations, the 2/24 weak layer likely survived the warm-up over the course of the weekend without significant alteration by the sun, though many locations did experience some irregular wind scrubbing in advance of this surface being buried. There are crust+facet combos on slopes facing the sun, and several cm thick facet stacks (with or without SH on top) on shaded slopes.
The density of the new snow decreased throughout the storm (right-side-up), which is making for some fantastic skiing. In wind-loaded and wind-pressed terrain there is a fairly obvious density inversion near the surface, but this snow skied quite well also. Some of the snow I skied through ended up on my smiling face.
There is a lot of uncertainty around the 2/1 weak layer, but its presence continues to drive my route selection when traveling in our deeper snowpacks.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9200 ft
I had poor visibility and could only see the terrain immediately in front of me. I was only able to see the reported avalanches because I walked to the tops of the slopes to see if they had avalanched. With the amount of wind loading and ongoing snowfall, it was still tricky to see if slopes had avalanched during the storm. These slides, and many like them, would be difficult to see from a distance.