Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Plenty of snow was being blown onto the leeward side of ridges and our persistant slab problem was obvious if you pushed your pole through to the bottom of the snow pack.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>We still have a shallow snow pack with a dense slab sitting on top of a weak faceted layer at ground level. The snow appears to be bridging well over the facets, but if you were to find the weak spot on a steep north facing slope you could trigger a slide down to ground level and would take a nasty bumpy ride with the entire seasons snow pack. </p>
It was obvious that the snow from Fridays storm was wet and heavy, similar to what you would find in the northeast or northwest, however it seemed like it dried out overnight and we were pleasantly surprised to find soft creamy snow on most aspects. We skied a southwest facing slope in Pinto glades before heading north over the ridge to find some protection from the wind. The snow in Pinto was supportable "carvable powder" (best description we could come up with) that provided good turns, however the snow transported by the wind was starting to create thin slabs in leeward areas. The snow on the north side was dense powder that provided some fantastic turns in the top few inches of the snow pack. We found 65 cm of snow in sheltered areas with dense supportable snow on top of a bottom layer of facets.