Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Rapid Warming, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Skied north facing today to stay off of solar aspects. </p>
Got up to the Argenta headwall before turning around today. Observed yesterday's fresh avalanche east of whitesnake on gobbler's, along with another one on the east side of the whitesnake drainage (probably only storm snow) that has effectively flushed that entire gully system since last thursday. We saw no recent avalanches in the Argenta drainage on the way up. I was expecting to see more activity to the west after we crested the headwall (especially after looking into Cardiff yesterday morning), but I only observed a few small slab avalanches in upper Mineral and Broads (Blue Ice, Diving Board). I assume there was less snow/loading closer to the city during the last storm. Picture of Gob's below. Again, photo quality sucks.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Definitely more in your face than the persistent slab problems we're currently seeing. Fairly reactive on steeper slopes. ECT6-10 with no propagation on the density breaks in the new snow. </p> <p>Did 2 ECTs on N Facing snow at about 9000'-9400'. After 10 from the shoulder with no results I was able to get Q1-2 shears on multiple facet layers deeper in the snowpack. My guess is that activating these facets would take a large load or hitting just the right spot near a convexity (check out Avalanche:Argenta). This weekend will be interesting if the forecast verifies.</p>
Great powder skiing. A few density changes in the storm snow