Quick report
- Aspect
- Northwest
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2743 m
- Slope Angle
- 23°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>The new snow is sitting on a mix of surfaces from melt freeze crusts, to wind crust, surface hoar in isolated areas, and on the polar aspects very weak near surface facets. The new snow was easily sluffing within itself and bonding poorly with the varied underlying snow surfaces. </p>
Quick pit at on a NNW slope at 9070' with a relatively shallow HS of 114cm not surprisingly showing weak layers in the upper pack. Of note was that the basal facets are still quite angular and had a 4F hardness, while in areas with a deeper snowpack I've found this layer to be much stronger. Looking down the road I'd anticipate the upper pack weaknesses to be our immediate problem, but wouldn't rule out reawakening the PWL in some periphery zones or areas with shallow snowpacks.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>New snow was easily sluffing within itself and bonding poorly with underlying snow surfaces. I'd expect any avalanches today to be small dry loose. We didn't get out of wind sheltered terrain today to see if there was any wind transport/developing wind slabs. </p>
Winter returned with 3-4" of low density new snow that drastically improved riding conditions especially in areas where this new snow is sitting on top of loose near surface facets.