Quick report
Early season-- Lots of obstacles like wood, rock, and bushes. Shallow, 2-3 foot deep snowpack with weak facets that formed from a dry, cold spell in November that are within the lower foot of the snowpack above strengthening basal facets that formed in October. The new snow that we got over the last week is sitting on a firm rain crust that is supportable even when walking in ski boots you are only penetrating the upper foot, and standing on a thick rain crust. Travel is good on skis while snowmobile travel truly begs for a couple feet or more.
Weak snow from November is within the bottom foot of the snowpack---it is rounded now and seems to be gaining strength and trending hard yet propagating and within depths for humans to trigger. Lower faceted snow formed in October looked very saturated and rounding.Avalanche
- Size
- D2 R2
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 7300 ft
This natural soft slab avalanche within the upper foot of new snow was small, R2D2, yet could injure someone. It was the largest avalanche evidence we saw during really limited visibility/short window. It seemed to have ran on the Nov facet layer, but could have been on the 12/4 rain crust during this past week? Temps were warming and we saw many rollerballs on the surface below 7k', and small loose debris , D1 on solar aspects (SE&E) from brief times when the sun warmed up few slopes.