Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
The snowpack has grown quite weak on wind-sheltered, shady aspects. My only concerns on these types of slopes today were small loose dry avalanches with the potential to entrain old faceted snow on sustained steep slopes (>38*). There was enough wind transport occurring in Washington Gulch that I'm sure there are sensitive wind slabs today at higher elevations, but I only got a small taste of that with minor cracking near ridgetop on Coneys.
Shallow cracking localized to wind loaded features at ridgetop. Cracks were shooting a bit further (~10' or so) where the storm interface was faceted, as opposed to wind board.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- N/A
- Recent Snowfall
- 12
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
West winds increased a bit throughout the morning, with periods of blowing snow at ridgetop and along valley floor from moderate wind speeds. Light (S1) snowfall this morning.
Snowpack
In wind sheltered terrain on northerly aspects, ski pen is to the ground (12" to 20") through a weak, faceted snowpack (fist hard, 1-1.5 mm facets) below the top 5" of new, low density snow. On east facing terrain, the storm interface is a collapsible crust (1cm thick, 4F+) above faceted snow. Still a fair amount of ground/vegetation roughness in this area. The storm interface is fragile enough that wind sheltered areas with higher snow totals may have thin storm slab issues; I was already starting to see little cracks in the storm snow under just 5".
Avalanche
Poor vis. On a small, steep test slope, I ski cut one loose dry sluff that entrained the entire weak snowpack to the ground.