Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Today's wind complely changed the game from yesterday. Wind slabs everywhere above the weather station. No natural activity was noted on the Ben Lomond Willard headwall.</p>
The recent new snow was mostly stable, the winds chaged all that. Lower elevations were not hit as hard by the wind and skied well albeit the coverage is so thin below 7500 ft that I hit several buried rocks and logs. Most ski exits of Cutler remain to brushy to ski out except the Cutler Ridge trail. This trail is now snow covered down to the park where you can ski groomed trails to your car.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Wind slabs were triggered remotely while setting the skin track. I saw 2 we trigered below the "dead tree" and another party trigered one in the same region. These cracked out above us. The slopes were 20 degrees at best. We skinned to the top of Cutler. Ski cut Bailey Cabin with minimal results. Released a couple of soft slabs which had little energy and didn't travel far. Party voted not to ski Baileys. We choose to ski lower slope angles. Every steeper rollover on the way down responded to ski cuts with cracking or slabs that broke loose and traveled short distances. It was easy to trap your skis underneath the slabs.</p> <p>These slabs will be covered with forecasted new snow tomorrow and will be much harder to indentify.</p> <p>Nothing yet, but it is snowing hard tonight. Perhaps this is the load that will awaken the buried weaknesses.</p>
Wind created a surface that was dense with lighter snow underneath. This made the ski tips submarine. Some wind scoured areas. Widespread wind damage even in the trees which are usually wind protected.