Quick report
- Aspect
- East
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3200 m
- Slope Angle
- 38°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Very small, welded cornice at entry to The Huge Chute was not difficult to negotiate to get into the chute. Dug a pit on a representative aspect that was disconnected from the rest of the entry, separated by a band of rocks. </p> <p>No collapsing in the entry to the chute nor any shifting/movement of the small cornice guarding the entry. </p> <p>The only activity was the thin, stiff slab a few cm. deep that sloughed off as we made our turns down the chute. </p>
The entry to The Granny Chute was 2-5cm of soft, faceting snow on top of dirt. We backed out of this area due to general rockiness and potential instabilities (trigger points?) that might have been lurking further down the chute as it got steeper and deeper. S
Shiny facets that welcomed us to the top of Patsy Marley and the entrance to the Cirque. Something to look for after the next storm?
Pit as described above. Dug right at the entrance to the chute but disconnected from the rest of the entry/chute.
Fun soft turns on the apron on a supportable layer that kept us off of the rocks that aren't buried too deep below the snow surface.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>No reactivity observed from this layer anywhere on the way up Patsy Marley or anywhere we looked in the Cirque. </p> <p>We had reservations as we entered Wolverine Cirque about wind loading and cornices. Cornices were small and not reactive in the slightest. We easily skirted them and found this hazard to be quite manageable.</p>
Our pit on an E aspect at just below 10,500' had an HS of 145cm. We were mainly concerned with the ground/base interface which consisted of 3-6cm of facets. This faceted layer showed evidence of having undergone the "healing" process and bonding to the slab above and the ground below. ECT did not produce any result deep into the snowpack on this layer.
As mentioned above, the surface of the snowpack that isn't being wind-scoured is faceting, making for a loose, soft top few cm. It will be interesting to see how the next snowfall reacts with this developing, potential weak layer.
Below that was a thin slab, 4-5cm thick at about 4F to 4F- hardness, that was not bonded well to the layer beneath it. This slab produced a weak result that did not propagate through the column in any direction (ECTN13). This same layer sloughed off in a manageable and predictable fashion as we put tracks down the chute.
The remainder of the snowpack was more or less one consolidated slab, with slight variation in hardness but no detected reactive layers.