Quick report
Snow surfaces not recieving direct sunlight were locked up tight. Solar aspects were softening near the surface. Felt like a spring snowpack while traveling above 6500'.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 34
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- 9000
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Valley inversion with isolated clouds. Light winds kept the snow surface cold, but ambient air temp was above freezing once we left the valley floor.
Snowpack
The snowpack on aspects that are not getting any direct solar radiation was very stable. Instability tests on N aspect at 6200', yielded no propagating results. These aspects provided some very challenging riding conditions with a mostly supportable crust up to 8 cm thick. Solar aspects softened as the day progressed. Snow near the surface at 7000' was wet, but the snow progressively got drier as you dug down. We conducted 2 Propagation saw tests, one on a late december crust, and another on the 20230122 crust. The first crust layer had moderate results of 60/100 end. The PST on the 20230122 crust propagated to the end at 43 cm. We concluded that was most likely the layer that the avalanche in Brown Creek failed on just north of our location.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R1
- Type
- WL
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- SW
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 6500 ft
We had expected to see many avalanches after the warm and wet weather, however, there was very limited activity in the Noisy Basin area.