Quick report
Today felt much warmer than yesterday, especially as the winds subsided throughout the morning. Coverage is good, north-facing snow is mostly soft and cold, and the V Bowl areas has been seeing a fair amount of skier traffic.
Near and above treeline, north and east slopes have been wind-affected, and one can find punchy wind deposits in open gullies.
East slopes below treeline were quite sticky, and moving back and forth from east to north down low caused some pretty serious clumping.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 25-45
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- None
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Mostly sunny and above freezing. Winds were moderate gusting to strong in the morning and blowing some snow around above treeline. By noon, winds were light with occasional moderate gusts.
Snowpack
HS: @7500: 90-100 cm
@9100: 130-180 cm
@11000: 150-200 cm
I dug on a north aspect at 9100 ft, similar to where I had dug a couple weeks ago. I found 180 cm of total snow, and the 2/10 interface was at 85 cm. Above the interface was new snow and wind broken particles of different hardnesses. Below 85 was well developed facets and crusts. An extended column test did not yield and results in the old facets (ECTX), but showed several low energy collapses at different storm interfaces that did not propagate (ECTN14@164, ECTN21@151).
I observed the remnants of several old very large avalanches (D2.5-3), that likely ran around the 2/19 timeframe.
The wind had created stubborn, brittle, punchy wind slabs above treeline, but I observed no wind slab avalanches.
I did not observe any collapsing or cracking during my tour.