Wind Slabs
- Alta quota
- Limite del bosco
- Sotto il limite del bosco
- Probabilità
- Likely
- Dimensione
- 2
For over 24 hours strong winds blowing between 30-40 MPH, gusting into the 50's and 60's loaded leeward slopes facing northwest through southeast. Sitting atop new snow in many places, today's wind-drifts can fail remotely from a distance and break up to 3' deep. Yesterday, small drifts were reactive underfoot to ski cuts and while stomping around on test slopes, a sure sign that bigger drifts in larger terrain are equally, if not more sensitive to our additional weight.
Today, I am steering clear of slopes that are steeper than 35° that are loaded, and live on the east half of the compass. When traveling, I am looking for rounded pillows and textured surfaces off of ridgelines on specific terrain features like cut-banks, gullies and mid-slope rollovers where these drifts will live. Above is a micro, wind-loaded slope that was fun to play around on and use as a test slope to evaluate the reactivity of our drifting. Even in wind-resistant terrain strong winds were moving and loading snow throughout the day yesterday.