Virginia Lakes

We went to Virgina Lakes to observe snowpack and conditions post rain storm.

We toured up to 10700' on a N aspect and found runnels up to around 10500'.  At 1030 AM, north facing snow surfaces remained firm and frozen, helped by light to moderate winds. Around noon, we crested over the ridge on to flat or south facing slopes and found snow to be wet and unsupportable. When we descended in early afternoon, the snow surface had softened just enough for enjoyable but still firm turns. At bottom of the slope and in the flats snow had become sticky and was unsupprtable to booting.

Today we observed several natural wet-loose avalanches size D1 in north facing terrain. These looked to be few days old. 

 

At 10,450' N aspect we found:

The top 15cm or so of snow had been saturated and refrozen. There were two K-P hard crusts near the surface that softened during the afternoon. Snow was still dry below this depth.

4F facets were present down 85 cm from surface under 4F to 1F snow. PST 50/100 END down 85cm at 2/10 interface.

HS= 225