Quick report
It's deep out there! So much so that even just getting out of town and to the trailhead posed a challenge. Then, ungroomed roads, dense snow, and a faulty snowmobile further slowed our progress. We only managed to make it to about 4300 ft. From an avalanche perspective, things weren't all that interesting where we were but you could find plenty to look at in the distance through a scope.
We experienced 1 small whumpf in lower elevation trees on a south aspect. On terrain in the distance, we observed signs of significant wind effect in alpine terrain.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- 85
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
The morning was mostly sunny, and some thicker puffy clouds rolled through as the day waned on. We experience two brief periods of snowfall. The wind was calm to light, but we could see plumes of snow transporting up along ridgelines at times.
Snowpack
At lower elevations, there was an average of 85cm (33in) of new snow. This snow overlayed either dirt or a very small amount of snow that had still been hanging on. The top 15cm of the new snow was light and dry, while the rest was much more moist and dense. The snow just smooshed down in snowpack tests and did not yield any notable results.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 5400 ft
We observed two natural wind slab avalanches on an east aspect around 5400 ft across the valley.