Quick report
Overall, pleased with stability after the recent storm in the terrain that we traveled through. Toured from 6,600' to 9,600' on southeast through north aspects. Stuck to terrain less than 35 degrees in steepness, mostly around 30. No cracking or collapsing was observed. Ok visibility allowed us to see steep upper elevation terrain. Few avalanches were observed except for the recent large avalanche on Nez Perce. This avalanche was on heavily loaded hanging snowfield.
Deep trail breaking conditions. 40-60cm ski pen. 80+ cm boot pen. Despite the wallowing, the new snow is settling and the skiing was more supportable than the previous days.
We dug out the nearly buried weather station. The interval board was last cleared on 2/4. Since then, the weather station has received 67" of snow containing 9" of Snow Water Equivalent! All this snow came in two storms. Not bad for the first half of February...
Weather
- Air Temp
- 20
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 4"
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Increasing clouds throughout the day. Periods of sun in the morning resulted in a thin zipper crust below 8,000 on solar aspects. Moderate temperatures. Calm conditions where we traveled. No signs of wind loading.
Snowpack
We dug a pit on a north facing aspect at 9,600' and checked out the mid to upper snowpack. The top 150cm of the snowpack is "rightside up" going from 1 finger hardness to fist hardness at the surface. The old snow interface was found 145cm (~5ft) below the surface. Stability tests revealed fractures, but no propagation, down 45 cm and 70 cm, both on 13 taps and then another ECTN down 110cm on 25 taps. These interfaces are likely mid storm density breaks as decomposing precip particles were observed at these interfaces. The total height of snow here was 420cm. Nice. That's about 14 feet of snow for us Americans.