Quick report
Time: 1600; Location: Lower Snowfields (~4300', NE aspect). About 30cm of wet, heavy, unconsolidated snow that has fallen on light winds blanketed a melt/freeze/rain crust in the lower reaches of the gullies. Hand shears showed stubborn sudden planar failure between the new snow/crust interface, but this interface didn't fail on a compression test (CTN). No cracking or signs of propagation were observed while traveling in the terrain, although on isolated slopes above 35 degrees I could get the snow beneath my ski while skinning to fail and slide downhill on the crust. I found some rollerballs below steeper terrain. I opted to ski the lower snowfields instead of lower Hillmans to minimize overhead hazard of a natural avalanche.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 28
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 30cm
Light to moderate snowfall, light E winds, visibility 1/4 mile or less.
Snowpack
The snowpack consisted of 30cm of 4F wet, heavy new snow on top of a 1cm P hard wet/saturated melt/freeze/rain crust, above 1F wet/saturated, homogenous previous corn-cycle snow.