Quick report
We hiked up the Summer Lion’s Head Trail to the traverse. Our objective was to approach the exposed terrain on the traverse and get an idea of connectivity and stability on SE aspects without traveling into Tuckerman’s Ravine. Visibility was not great but better than expected. We could see the path was well connected and capable of producing avalanches.
A thin wind skin was developing in the top cm of new snow. It was easily triggered by simply laying down a ski pole on the snow surface. A quick extended column test resulted in a slab difficult to propagate within recent (but older) snow, 35cm down from the surface. This failed on a thin weak layer of faceting grains in the interface
Weather
- Air Temp
- 0
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Recent Snowfall
- 13.5 @ Hermit Lake
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Decreasing temps, increasing winds, blowing snow and low visivility
Snowpack
ECTP29 35cm down from the surface
New snow was fist to 4F hard, 1F below
There were several visible layers forming within the recent snow (top 40cm)
Snow depth was 205cm at the hasty pit location