Quick report
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>We noticed no obvious signs of instability, but I found lots of areas plagued by fist-hard (still soft) sugary or faceted snow. I was not able to produce a propegating failure in my ECT tests today, but the fact that the early January facets exist less than a meter deep in the snowpack, and that they are still soft, angular, and weak is enough to keep me leaning toward the more conservative side of things when making terain related decisions.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>No natural activity noted, no collapsing or cracking, but a look at the snow pack shows that potential is certainly still there at least in isolated, and perhaps outlying, areas.</p> <p>Shallow wind slabs and cornices built with the weekend's fresh snow and the moderate northwest winds last night and today. These were small and quite manageable near the crest of Red Pine Ridge today, but probably a bit bigger in some more exposed areas.</p>
We found a few inches of fairly light powder on the old snow surface. Low angled slopes sported the best fast and shallow powder conditions... East facing slopes had less new snow than west and forested areas. It seems the moderate east winds toward the end of the small weekend storm kept the new snow on these slopes very shallow , around 2" of new snow only...