Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Location: 4800' in climbers left side of Chute fan; Time: 1130. While approaching the Chute fan, we encountered a mix of 4F windslab 4-8" deep, P windboard, and old melt-freeze/rain crust from 2/17. Hand shears in multiple locations in the windslab revealed a highly reactive (usually failing upon isolation) layer of graupel ~2" down within the slab. We also observed cracking while booting up on the same layer of graupel. The crust-windslab interface was less reactive. From the choke up the climbers right side of upper Chute appeared to have deeper and more connected windslab that we didn't want to venture out onto. Instead we skied the fan of Chute sticking to the isolated pockets of windslab and windboard with no instabilities observed on descent. We weren't too concerned about the graupel weak layer given its unconnected and shallow nature where we skied, but were happy to avoid steeper terrain with more connected windslab.