Quick report
- Cracking
- widespread
- Collapsing
- widespread
At 4600’ as I entered the opening to cross mountaineers creek towards colchuck lake I heard a very large whumpf and experienced the snowpack collapse. I decided to turn around and not proceed up the slope toward the lake abandoning my desire to ski Asgard and Colchuck Glacier. I retreated to an opening below at about 4000’ to dig a pit in relative safety. There I found two crusts separated by about 1” of very weak snow that was consistently failing and sliding at the interface of the two crusts during tilt tests and compression tests. The top crust sat beneath 5” of fresh lighter snow at 4000’ but the snow total above the crust increased rapidly with elevation gain. I stayed the night hoping for improvement but found on the morning of the 29th that the light precipitation and snow surface had become wet and trees were shedding snow and many steep slopes has size able rollerballs forming.