Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Rapid Warming
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>The day started out the same as yesterday, but the rapid warming and increasing winds started to change the snow surface, so we became more wary throughout the day. As a wise old avalanche sage noted: "Yesterday's blower powder is tomorrow's slab"</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Higher, steeper, and more wind-loaded slopes would have made us really nervous later in the day. We were happy to be in a more-sheltered area. </p> <p>On quick hand pits we were getting nice clean shears about 14-16" down to come out with a fair bit of effort. There was some of discussion about water weight: does increased temps that makes the snow feel heavier actually increase the actual weight? (we think not, and there was only about 3" of new). Regardless of that point, with a fair bit more loading it may be possible to create enough pressure to generate that "fair bit of effort" on those layers that will soon be more like 2.5+ feet deep, creating the potential for big avalanches. But maybe not? Hard sayin' at this point. Could be that the new storm comes in as a slab and any new snow slab avies could generate enough pressure to step down? Again, at this point hard sayin'. But this big change from a couple of days ago and more big changes in the forecast makes us wary. </p>
First thing in the morning both the old snow and the new snow were nice and powdery and it wasn't much different from yesterday, but over the course of the day got heavier, to the point where we were seeing rollerballs at ~9000' and at 8500 the skis were sticking. Above 9k it was still fine riding.