Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Mostly just wanted to check out the variability or the snow structure, it varies widely within meters. Look at comments on ECT test below. </p>
Dug a pit that had some wind loading (160 cm deep), performed a shovel shear and two ECT's. Shovel shear failed around 85 on the layer probably triggered most of the slides from yesterday, first ECT failed at 25, second did not fail but pulled at the ground with light shovel push from the back. Not encouraging for gathering data to predict what will fail at any time. Below are pics of the first ECT failure. I'm rating tomorrow considerable but the consequences of being caught in a slide right now should be sobering.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>At 9500' and up the snowpack doesn't visually look too bad until the ground layer, but it fails at numerous layers anyway. From what we noticed it's really unpredictable, making it that much more dangerous. Just because your buddy, or a hundred other people skied a slope doesn't mean it won't rip out on you. </p>
Not really any new snow from yesterday, rode really well though. Was thinking maybe these kind of snow conditions where a fond memory from last year.