Quick report
- Collapsing
- specific
Our tour in total was a varitey of snow conditions. Solar aspects had a clear melt freeze crust present and shaded aspects held cold snow that is starting to become widespread near surface facets. Ridgelines had patches of exposed rain crusts, wind effected snow, small areas of wind slabs and deeper pockets of wind loaded snow. We did see some snow transportation off the peaks and ridgelines but was isolated to upper elevations and what little snow exsisted was transporting on N-NE-E aspects. During our descent we kept our terrian selection mellow down to Meiss meadow riding below 30 degrees after our failure within our extended column test. The snow quailty was enjoyable but obstacles held us back from riding freely.
ECTP22 @ 9100' on NE aspect on facets 45cm down.Weather
- Air Temp
- Above freezing
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Today was mostly overcast with intermittent rays of sunshine. At the trailhead winds were non exsistent but we could see banners off the face of Elephant's Back. Once we reached the ridge @ 8900' around 1015 the winds were still blowing out of the W-SW at a sustainded moderate rate. The clouds prevented solar radiation for softening the snow throughout our tour and temps remained above freezing.
Snowpack
We stopped to dig a pit @ 9100' on a NE aspect to check the PWL within the snowpack. The layers were similar to what we have been finding with a mix of facets and ice crusts near the ground and more recent snow near the surface. Between each crust facets exsisted below and above each crust. These facets were dry and non-compressible. The facets are weak and resulted in a ECTP22 and failed between two crusts @ 45cm down from the surface. We repeated the test a second time and got a similar result of failure. I dug a hasty pit at the bottom of the meadow @ 8400' to inspect the facets there and they were still a little dry but compressed in the hand.