Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Was surprised while traveling to not personally have much notable cracking or collapsing, there was a bit - but not very widespread throughout the tour. Even while breaking trail above 9000'. I don't think this is representative of the snowpack and more of an outlier situation. The snowpack structure was very poor, and when we put our shovels in we couldn't find anything much harder than 4F within the entire snowpack. Most of the tour was protected by the winds, but areas that seemed to have any signs of wind drifted snow showed the highest instability and connectivity on top of the weak faceted snow. </p>
Went out to look at how our poor snowpack structure would handle the new snow load. About 12-16" of new low/medium density snow between the car and the top of Silver. It was a nice change of pace for the riding and skinning conditions. While we were traveling we saw few very obvious signs of instability, we got a couple of small cracks, but no widespread collapses. I was able to get a small test slope into the gully to avalanche, just a SS about 10' wide. I dug a pit on an NW aspect at 9300', with a snowpit depth of about 3 feet, we had 17" of fist hard new snow sitting on top of the preserved buried surface hoar. I don't think this SH layer was widespread, but we were in a rather wind-protected zone. The remainder of the snowpack was varying sizes of faceted grains .5mm-1mm mid snowpack, to 3mm at the ground. Even with the buried surface hoar and poor snowpack structure, I was unable to get any results in my extended column test. I think this was due to the lack of wind, and lack of structure in the new snow where we dug. Get anywhere that had a bit more wind, and a bit more of a cohesive slab on top of that weak snow I would expect to get some more results.
Overall glad the riding has improved, but with the weak snowpack and a large load, I am going to continue sticking to low angle terrain. Snowpack hand hardness at NW pit at 9300' in Beartrap.
Photos of the new snow and coverage