Quick report
- Aspect
- Northwest
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading
- Elevation
- 2896 m
- Slope Angle
- 25°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Fewer and fewer red flags as more days pass since the last significant loading. </p>
Here's a quick 2 1/2 minute video of the weekend preview as I narrate the snowpack setup and the wind loading conditions along the ridge top. This is for the deeper snowpack areas at 9,500' and above on northwest through east facing slopes. The shallow snowpack areas will have weaker and potentially more unstable snow.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The lingering persistent slabs still have a chance to break deep and large. They are now buried much deeper than before the storm, making them more difficult to trigger. It's the classic very low probability but very high consequence situation. In the deeper snowpack areas, the place where people could trigger these monsters are from the thin snowpack areas such as a wind blown ridge or in steep, shallow, rocky sections. I'm still choose to avoid the upper elevations north through east facing slopes, espcially ones with recent wind loading, which I would rate as Considerable </p> <p>It seems like the slopes below about 9,000' have a fairly stout crust from the rain and warm temperatures, so they are probably a notch lower on the danger scale--probably Moderate. </p> <p>Yes, we have 8 inches of light powder and we've had a lot of wind from the west and northwest, which created lots of wind damage in the upper elevations and areas of wind deposited snow. But the wind slabs are mostly soft and not terribly reactive. Resorts report the same thing, soft, relatively manageable wind slabs. These will settle out and be less reactive tomorrow.</p>
Nice, light, fluffy powder on a supportable base and even the pre-existing ice crusts on southerly faces were much improved with the new dusting of snow.