Quick report
- Aspect
- East
- Elevation
- 3231 m
- Slope Angle
- 27°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>No red flags to mention today.</p>
Dug on an East Face around 10,600 ft in the Gold Basin moraines between Tele Heaven and Exxon's. I've been monitoring the facets in the bottom of the pack each day I've been out. The bottom layer of our snowpack has gained some strength over the past week. Temperature gradients have been small and are promoting rounding of the faceted crystals in this layer. The facets are losing their angles, and are getting smaller in size. Today they measured about 1mm. It has been relatively warm up in the mountains over the past week, and this has been good for the bottom of our snowpack. This layer is very thin in places and I've found it to be 25cm at it's biggest.
I covered a lot of ground today and just about every aspect. South and West faces are getting shallow and could use more snow. As I worked around lower Gold Basin I headed towards lower Exxon's for an exit run. Started up the hiker's left side, took a look at the boulder field in the bottom and bailed. We need more snow!
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Any problems associated with wind slabs should be trending down. NW winds blew in the 20's yesterday and teens overnight, but there was not much snow available for transport. Winds were calm today and yesterday's "storm" only delivered an inch, so new windslabs haven't formed. </p> <p>I think it's safe to say the faceted snow in the bottom of our snowpack is dormant for now. At the bottom of the pack there is a layer of 4F snow on the ground ranging in thickness from 6cm to 25cm depending where you go. This is mostly found on N and E aspects. Stability testing over the past week has produced no results on this layer. </p>
A Trace to an inch of new snow fell last night. Just enough to make for some fun dust on crust conditions.