Quick report
Objectives: Observe wind effect and survey surface forms. Find soft faceted snow (recycled pow) on low-angle shady slopes for quality turns.
Results: Strong winds last week moved the majority of soft snow into old, unreactive windslabs. Decent quality turns were only found in sheltered areas below 7000'. Above that, the wind wreaked havoc and we couldn't find spots sheltered enough.
Implications: We chose not to continue to the ridge because the old variable wind slabs were grabby and we could see that they extended as far as we could see. Whenever we get our next snow (fingers crossed it's in January), it will rest on a variety of surfaces.
None.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- valley bottom
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Variable Moderate winds out of the E, N, and W with Strong gusts. Blowing snow was minimal on the surface and near ridgelines, only because there is little soft snow left for transport. Temps around 20F, but windchill towards 0F.
Snowpack
Surface snow consisted of either near surface facets and decomposing fragments (0.5-1mm), wind-packed rounds, or a scoured 1cm melt freeze crust on SE at 7200'. This was the case on all aspects observed, except for shallow snowpacks on NW 6500-7000', which held fist (F) hard 1-2mm facets on the surface and directly below a thin (1-2cm) wind skin.
We were surprised to not find surface hoar, but think that it may have been too windy or too dry for it in this location.
At 7450' NW in a sheltered clearing, there was a total height of snow of 145cm and an air temp of -5.9C/21F. T10: -8.8C, T20:-7.9C .