Quick report
- Aspect
- East
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading
- Elevation
- 2865 m
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Didn't check the poor snowpack structure, since what we saw today was far better than what we normally have for this time of year. Although the more open east facing slope had a variety of layers it didn't seem like there were many obvious shears or burried persistent weak layers/grains. The north facing slope from the second pit may not have been representative but the snow there had pretty decent structure for a pretty thin snowpack.</p> <p>There had clearly been a substantial amount of wind the day prior which helped to fill in old tracks but also created some hard wind slabs along ridge tops. These could crack with some effort.</p>
I wanted to look at some north facing snow and was surprised at how thin the snowpack was in this area. This may not be representative of other slopes at this elevation but the structure seemed to be pretty decent with no ECT result and no persistent weak layer grain types that didn't show evidence of rounding.
.
Quick profile shown above shows a more complex situation on this relatively open east facing area. Many of the stronger areas may have been old wind slabs/events. This area had less grauple in the upper snowpack than other areas of recent travel including Grizzly Gulch and Reynolds.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Although we were in relatively protected terrain, the wind had clearly been strong so this could have been problematic in more exposed, alpine areas.</p> <p>Although we did not find extensive facets (most seemed to be rounding), other aspects and slope may contain these weak layers.</p>
Wind from Monday had affected the snow but it mostly skied well once just down off the ridge tops. It appeared that in some places the wind had eroded some new snow leaving grauple on the surface. Wind drifts along the ridge tops were pretty stubborn and difficult to crack.