Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
From the treeline to 6000', the new snow was covered with ice (freezing rain this weekend) and frozen hard, but from 6,000' to the rim (8300') there were areas of soft new snow. On south aspects above 7500', the new snow was ubiquitous and up to 20" thick. Wherever the new snow was present, it was topped by a shallow wind slab that was poorly bonded to the new snow beneath. On the highest slopes (above 7900') the wind slab was 2-3" thick and easily slipped off the underlying snow in the footprints of passing climbers (cracks sometimes extended up to 8 inches from footprints) or when I dug test pits. The new snow beneath the wind slab appeared very well bonded to the underlying older ice layer. Skiers descending from 8300' on steep slopes where this layer was present did not trigger any avalanches today. With cold temperatures and a lot of clouds and fog, snow stayed frozen hard above 3,000' and I saw no recent loose wet avalanches. As I decended today starting at 2 PM, winds came back up and between 6000 and 8300 feet and were blowing at about 25 mph out of the NE and moving a lot of snow.