Quick report
- Aspect
- North
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3048 m
- Slope Angle
- 37°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>we now have a great bed surface will faceting snow on top of it that if weather remains warm, could be the next factor. On more exposed terrain, east facing, the usual suspect of wind loading has built hard slab that may be up to 3+ feet thick tapering to zero at the transition to flatter terrain. The hard slab is sitting on a 5"graupel layer, but repeated pounding could not get hard slab bridging to fail. Shallow facets at the ground do exist, but wonder what it would take to activate them, bridging is occurring and for the time being is very strong. </p>
This is a look at the average sheltered terrain near 10,000'
We also took a look at the summit ridge in an area we felt OK about getting out on
graupel layer beneath hard slab/cornices
hard slab tapers to zero at bottom of slope
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>things are stable for now, cornices welded in place, finding that area shallow enough to collapse difficult due to large rocks enough warning to keep anyone out. Other sheltered terrain is faceting on top, but warm temps are going to slow that process </p> <p>In sheltered terrain snow could be faceting slowly and setting on top of settled stronger snow that is a great bed surface. The pack held together firmly on ECT test, ECT 16 Q1 on 2 or so inches offacets at the ground . </p>
despite 0.8 reported at Cottonwood/Mammoth, was not snow until you neared 9000', rain below that did some major melting with sad looking conditions around Wasatch Academy Hut and even Lower Electric Lake Ridge. We quickly decided to head up into upper terrain in hopes of finding enough snow to talk about, let alone put a turn or two in. Our guess was right, N facing sheltered terrain off the end of the Ridge (not to mention just off the road). The shallow pack still is lumpy, and most significant lumps can be counted on to be rocks, and are to be avoided. None the less, last weeks snow had strengthened in the warm weather and kept you off the ground, while the upper 6" was faceting and fun to crank turns in, again, in selected areas. Steve did report a single collapse, very localized on a steeper part of our uptrack, 2nd time up.