Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
Several intentionally-triggered wind slab avalanches on small test slopes. I observed many small to large recent wind slab avalanches and small sluffs on my drive. See avy obs.
Weather
- Air Temp
- Above Freezing
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Recent Snowfall
- 25
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Mostly sunny with solar aspects below treeline taking a lot of heat. Winds were strong out of the west wind intense loading even as I left Mammoth after 1pm. I walked around a windward fetch near treeline midday and there was still plenty of snow left for transport even after this morning's intense drifting.
Snowpack
After seeing solar aspects taking so much heat I stomped around on some southeast-facing test slopes below treeline in the hottest part of the day. I got a few rollers, but more than that I got isolated, localized cracking in wind-drifted snow. The snow surface was getting heavy and sticky and perhaps wet loose avalanches were a problem on very steep sunny slopes near rocky areas or under trees later in the afternoon. Wind cooling on those aspects seemed to be keeping deep wet snow at bay. I'd bet there will be a sun crust there tomorrow morning.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R1
- Type
- U
- Count
- 6
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 8500 ft
Triggered avalanches were soft slabs failing on Fist-hard precip particles from early in last night's storm.