Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
As we traveled along the PCT trail out to Frog Lake the weather's erratic temperature swings was bringing waves of: snow, mist, snain and rain all the way up to 9000'. This made the surface snow wet and eventually formed loose wet movement by early afternoon. The wind was blowing out of the SW-W and transporting moderates amounts of snow and forming small wind slabs. Slowly approaching a NE-E facing cornice line I was able to kick a small peice of cornice that triggered a small reactive 4" wind slab that propagated across ~100' and ran for ~100' down slope. Snow totals did not amount to much in the few hours we were out there maybe 1" at best. There was no snow on the truck when we got back.
Reactive wind slab released under NE-E facing cornice on ski kick. A small portion of cornice released and triggered a 4" windslab underneath it. The wind slab propagated 100' across the slope and ran 100' down slope.Weather
- Air Temp
- Near freezing
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- Observed to 9000'
- Recent Snowfall
- 1-2cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Stormy but warm. Winds were moderate with strong gusts out of the SW-W. Cloud cover was obscured with no views of surrounding peaks. Large temperature gradient swings in the ambient air temperature made for periods of mist, snow, snain, and overall wet precipitation totals.
Snowpack
Surface snow was wet and seemed to destory any signs of surface hoar that was present yesterday. I dug my pit at 8800' on a NW aspect. The basal facets and Jan. 2nd layer was moist/wet and compressible but still 4F hard with large grains that, did show some signs of instability on the compression test with CT27 collapsing near the ground but no resluts on ECT. Top half of snowpack was rightside up.