Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Collapsing
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>We were surprised not to see avalanches, but we experienced lots of collapsing.</p>
Dug a few times on southerly aspects. No need on northerly aspects...we know it's bad.
On a SE aspect at 9700ft I found some stable snow. Rock solid but I wouldn't extrapolate to any other slopes. They are guilty until proven otherwise. Total snow depth was 110 cm (3.6 ft)
On a S aspect at 9800 feet I got different results. Total snow depth was 105 cm (3.4 ft). Did two extended column tests. Both broke about 3 inches above the ground and the break propagated across the whole column after 13 and 14 taps (3 and 4 from the elbow). The coding for this is ECTP 13 and ECTP 14. This indicates unstable snow. My gut feeling was that S facing slopes aren't too bad, but I would hold off riding slopes steeper than 30 degrees for now.
The widespread collapsing and unstable stability test results trump any gut feeling.for now.
Snowpack
Over the hood riding. Didn't measure new snow depths (day off sorry), but I'd say maybe 1.5 feet of new on average.