Near Purches Creek
Quick report
Today felt like the definition of variable snow. We found stiff, barely edgeable wind crusts, breakable crusts, hot pow (wetted facets), and dry recycled powder. We were able to initiate small facets sluffs on a northwest-facing slope. These were very small, but on a nearby slope we saw a larger (D1) facet sluff a rider-triggered while ski-cutting the slope.
By 3:30, solar slopes had become wet but showed no signs of instability.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Mostly sunny skies and mild temperatures. By the afternoon, calm winds had become light from the south and southwest.
Snowpack
Surfaces were a mixture of refrozen wet snow, cold dry facets, and wind crusts. We found little to no stout old wind slabs along the way. We found soft, faceted snow on a northwest-facing slope that was more protected from the wind. On the other side of the compass, we found thin refrozen crusts on south and southeasterly slopes. The upper ~10 cm of the snowpack had become wet by 3:30 PM. Below the upper 10 cm of the snowpack, we found thin ice lenses developing below the wetted snow.
Avalanche
We saw several old avalanches that either occurred during strong winds near the end of March or over the last few days from warm temperatures (Wet loose in the rocks). Of note was a small sluff that a skier triggered sometime over the last week. See Photos.