Tuckerman Ravine

The wet snow instabilities observed yesterday have refrozen into a strong, cohesive melt-freeze crust at the snow surface, adding stability to the snowpack and leaving very little soft snow above, resulting in a predominantly hard, refrozen top layer.

Looking at the broader context, the existing snowfields have become more interconnected and planar. This structure is likely to act as an effective bed surface for any new snow, particularly given the smooth nature of the melt-freeze crust.

The snowpack, as observed everywhere, was capped by a melt-freeze crust of varying thickness. In the woods, the crust was about an inch thick and could almost support a person's weight. In the ravine, the crust was observed to be several inches thick across all areas, easily supporting the weight of a person. In one location on the ravine floor, the crust was six inches thick. Digging below the crust, we found unstructured, moist, soft snow with a uniform four-finger density, ranging from 24 to 30 inches above the previous hard surface. No red flags indicating current instabilities were found. Very little soft snow was present above the melt-freeze crust.

Looking at the bigger picture, existing snowfields are more interconnected and planar, likely acting as a good bed surface for any new snow to slide on, especially considering the existing smooth melt-freeze crust. Despite the 21.5 inches of new snow from the recent storm, large wind slabs were not observed in Tuckerman Ravine. This aligns with the 65-85 mph southeast winds recorded during the storm period with the highest precipitation intensity. We were curious about the existence of new wind slabs on west and north aspects. Given the widespread presence of the melt-freeze crust in Tuckerman Ravine and the wet slab observations (1/10/24) from a west aspect on Wildcat Ski Area at 3300 feet elevation, it is likely that west and north aspects are also capped with the same melt-freeze crust.