Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Not much new snow, but it is on the heavy wet side and combined with very strong winds, the snow pack has received some added weight which might over load and activate some of the buried weak layers? </p> <p>Cornices were a little sensitive today along with wind slabs up to a foot deep that would crack and move downhill entraining the wet snow piling up dense debris.</p>
I was finding about 4" of high density snow on a mostly supportable crust this morning riding into Gold Hill. A few more inches higher in the basin and along the ridge lines.
Easy to track the series of storms and warm weather over the last few weeks with a couple shovels of snow.
The fresh wind slabs were breaking up to a foot deep along the Gold Hill ridge line and stacking up some wet heavy debris. These should settle out quickly and less of an issue tomorrow.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The fresh wind slabs were the main issue in my travels, these were somewhat sensitive breaking up to a foot deep and would entrain the new snow as they moved downhill. I would imagine these will settle out quickly and be more stubborn tomorrow. </p> <p>The heavy wet snow combined with strong winds have likely stressed some of the buried weaknesses in the shallow snow pack areas. These types of slopes might just need the weight of a person to come along and tip the scales producing a decent size avalanche. </p>
A couple wet inches at the trail head this morning and around 4-5" of medium to high density snow in Gold Hill Basin. I was half expecting wet unsupportable riding conditions today, but with temperatures that cooled last night and mostly cloudy today the snow held up fairly well till mid afternoon.