Quick report
Other than rollerball debris from a loose wet avalanche that may have occurred last night, we saw no other signs of instability. As we were ascending, we estimated that approximately 8” of new snow had fallen since last Sunday afternoon, which was the last time we were in the area. Also, we noticed a thin crust on the snow surface throughout our travels below 7600’ . During our tour we observed a temperature of 29 degrees. Winds were moderate gusting to strong coming from the east. These winds were effectively transporting snow from exposed windward areas and depositing the snow on leeward west facing terrain at our location. There were intermittent snow showers, but very little snow accumulation while we were out. The sky was completely covered by clouds during our tour and the peaks were obscured. We dug a snowpit on a 25 degree east facing slope near Hoffer Lake. The snow height at our location was 97 centimeters (about 3’). In this snowpit we observed poor snowpack structure particularly down about 2’ where a stout crust resides that was formed in November. Weak faceted snow resides above and below the crust. This was definitely our area of concern. We performed an Extended Column Test (ECT) and sure enough, our column enthusiastically failed with propagation in the weak faceted layer above the November crust (ECTN 14).
Avalanche
We observed deposition and rollerballs from a small loose wet avalanche above Hoffer Lake.