Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>There were a couple of natural avalanche cycles today during periods of high precipitation intensity (PI) and some wind-drifting.</p>
Very sensitive storm snow conditions today and ski cuts were effective with dealing with this sort of problem. My biggest concern was getting caught in a small slide and getting carried into a tree so our party always put a ski cut at the top of a steeper portion of the slope and avoided terrain, such as steeper roll-overs and steeper gullies where the snow could accumulate.
Most photos today were poor quality due to challenging lighting, but the photo below is the natural avalanche on Murphy's Headplant: ~150' wide and ran ~200' through aspen trees.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Widespread cracking in storm snow above 8,000' - literally every step or ski turn in new snow produced cracking. We counted five natural avalanches (there were likely more that we couldn't see due to poor visibility) - these were small, generally D1 or D1.5, but a few ran through aspen trees which would be poor terrain to get caught in even a small avalanche. Despite most slopes cracking and spider-webbing, you needed a steeper slope (approaching 35 degrees) to get the snow to move.</p> <p> </p> <p>The two largest natural avalanches we saw were (1) Murphy's Headplant (photo below) and (2) Paradise. Paradise ran twice - likely getting re-loaded from winds. </p> <p> </p> <p>The weak layer was a density inversion down 30-40 cms and this should settle out quickly - it may not even be reactive by Monday.</p>
Somewhat dense snowfall, but lower-density than what we've been seeing with these recent AR (atmospheric river) events.