Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
Went for an evening look around at Little O’Malley and Skiers Gully. The soft, dry snow from the recent storm has settled 4-5” over the past couple days with impressive settlement cones everywhere. Winds started picking up just below treeline and were moving snow. Near treeline we triggered multiple loud collapses and got large shooting cracks. We were finding this to be most common in transition areas between protected trees and open, stripped meadows; specifically where the new slab was both thick and packed by wind. Slab depths though were variable, 4-6” thick to nearly 2’ thick. Turned around near treeline due to strong easterly winds moving snow and the feedback from the snowpack screaming instability. An interesting band of light snow was moving through the zone when we arrived with low cloud coverage and light snowfall which dissipated with increasing winds around 6:30pm