Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
A recreational ski day riding low-angled terrain on Mount Baldy. Avalanche activity paints a clear picture of easy-to-trigger avalanches on west-north-east slopes near and below the treeline. Collapsing was frequent, and the recent natural avalanches were impossible to miss.
We largely traveled low-angle south and southwest slopes. We experienced lots of collapsing on low-angle sunny slopes due to the thin crust on low-angle slopes below the storm snow We crossed a few west features that collapsed as well. The few short, steep, sunny slopes we crossed did not collapse, as crusts below the new snow were very thick. We did not see natural avalanches run today.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- 55
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Warm day with light winds at elevation traveled. Some transport was observed on the highest peaks at the end of the day.
Snowpack
Rime crust from Saturday night was observed up to 11,400 feet. Warm temperatures and solar 'green housing' moistened sunny slopes and quickly helped settle the new slab during the day. Settled storm totals around 45 to 55 cm. Half of the slab is 4-fingers hard. A single snowpack test on a steep southwest slope at 11200 feet did not produce notable results (see image).
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Type
- SS
- Count
- 22
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 11200 ft
Extensive natural avalanche cycle over the past two days on shady aspects in the Slate corridor from Happy Chutes, Climax Chutes, Schuylkill Ridge, and Purple Ridge. Most activity occurred near and below treeline. The alpine was quiet, but given the stiff old surfaces up high before the storm, it made some sense. There are dozens and dozens of other small D1s throughout the zone NOT coded here, and many textured-looking slopes that likely ran early in the storm cycle but are hard to identify so not coded as well.