Quick report
- Cracking
- Observed
- Collapsing
- widespread
The good news: ski pen is decreasing, so we weren't skiing on the ground, smashing rocks the whole time. The bad news: That's because the slabs are stiffening and the signs of instability are more frightening, with loud, long-running collapses and less friendly/predictable behavior.
Once we got off of an older skin track set yesterday, we experienced constant collapses/shooting cracks. Collapses seemed to rumble further as we gained elevation (where the slabs are a bit stiffer and thicker) and would span entire slopes. One remote triggered slide. These instabilities were all failing about 2 feet deep on the 11/30 facet layer near the ground.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- 30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Snowpack
Hasty crown profile of today's remote trigger: 40 to 55 cm slab (F+ to 4F-) above F hard facets (1-1.5 mm). The recent storm made up the top half of the slab. Alpine looks wind BLASTED, and I'm sure slabs are much stiffer up there.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Type
- SS
- Count
- 16
- Aspect
- E
- Elevation
- 11700 ft
There was evidence of a cycle of small soft slabs on the shady side of the Slate (northerly to east aspects N/BTL) - mostly D1-1.5, one D2 on Schuylkill Ridge. Many of the crowns are disguised now by continued snowfall and wind drifting; I only documented the more obvious ones. The crowns that we looked at up close failed as persistent slabs on old snow near the ground; though I'm guessing some activity also failed as storm/wind slabs at the density change that formed early in the storm. The Ruby Range remained socked in, but I saw one large-ish (D1.5 or D2?) avalanche on a SE aspect of Baldy and another on the west side of Baldy. There was a trio of very fresh-looking persistent slab crowns this afternoon in Red Lady Bowl below the skintrack (E aspect NTL) that I speculate were remotely triggered today.