Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- widespread
Skied a few laps in the trees to enjoy all the new snow and get a look at how the new snow is bonding and setting up. We found about 12" of new snow at treeline. It was obvious that storm winds had moved snow and loaded some terrain features that felt very upside down. We experienced tons of collapses and cracking in the snowpack, verifying the expected instability with the new snow. Surprisingly, we felt 3 separate large collapses on an established skin track while touring up for two more laps. Skiing was deep, heavy, and a joy. Maybe a dozen or so collapses felt throughout the day. Stomping on test slopes near treeline produced cracking and collapsing but no avalanches. Got a short glimpse of what looked like a large natural avalanche on the shoulder of Sharksfin SW aspect, bad visibility and trees made it difficult to be certain.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 800 in the AM, 0' in the afternoon
- Recent Snowfall
- 25-30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
In the morning, rain switched to snow at around 800-900', snowing at Tincan pullout. It generally snowed hard throughout the day (S1), with some breaks where it would lightened up. Infrequent strong gusts of wind at treeline were moving snow. Snowing hard at sea level in the afternoon when we left!
Snowpack
Dug a pit at 2330' on a south aspect and conducted instability tests. We got concerning results with ECTP3 25cm down at what appeared to be new/old snow interface. No results in our pit on any deeper layers even through overdrive.