Quick report
We toured up to about 3700' on Mt. Eva. Quite a bit of moss and devil's club on the approach. We found a supportable crust from treeline up to about 3000', and some dry snow on northwest-north aspects above that. Even those shaded aspects had been effected by the recent warm temps, and there was some stiff snow below a skiff of softer faceted snow. We dug one pit at about 3100' and found the Valentine's Day buried surface hoar layer. It was about 2' down and stubborn in the pit, but failed with a lot of energy with a few extra taps on a stability test (ECTP 32). We noticed one natural wet loose avalanche triggered by a cornice fall, and a lot of roller ball activity on all aspects.
On our drive back to Girdwood we noticed a lot of fresh glide activity in the Summit Lake area, and a very large avalanche above the Shakespeare glacier near Portage that looked like it was most likely triggered by cornice fall.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Scattered high stratus clouds with plenty of sun filtering through. It felt like the clouds were helping to keep the snow surfaces from getting cooked.