Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2926 m
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Poor structure persists with well developed, dry facets from the ground to the mid pack on N through NE. We didn't dig on W, S, or E aspects. </p>
Below photo of graupel.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>We dug multiple hand pits on N through NE between 9k and 9500'. New snow was unconsolidated and fist hardness in protected areas, with a decomposing crust mid pack, and fist minus, well developed dry facets on the ground in all hand pits (photo 2). On the ridge, we found 4 finger hardness wind drifted snow on top of the decomposing crust and fist minus facets, creating an upside down structure with stronger over weaker snow. </p> <p>We observed debris from a natural small avalanche in Days Fork in rocky terrain (photo 3, poor focus but gives an idea of terrain, another observer reported this earlier), which we suspected was due to graupel pooling from rolling over cliff bands after this morning's precip, tipping the scale on top of the PWL. </p> <p>We identified wind slab along the ridge tops with compacted four finger snow. We didn't find any evidence of mid slope or cross loading wind slab today, but we were in a very isolated (and protected) area and I'm sure it was out there. Would guess this is present mid slope in higher elevations. This will continue to be a problem if we have high winds in tomorrow afternoon's predicted system (which may bring wind without snow) with plenty of new snow available for transport.</p>
We could feel a melt freeze crust under today's new snow on E and SE aspects, wind deposition with higher density along ridge tops, and a noticeable density inversion on N and NE in the top 20 cm that we attributed to this morning's graupel (photo 1) and wind.