Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>It still hasn't gotten very warm since the last storm, so there is some snow hanging around that will run when it finally gets warm up high. However, it's not a lot of snow. Something to remain aware of, but not a reason to stay out of the higher peaks.</p>
The new snow was poorly bonded to the old snow surface. In areas where it was windloaded and more cohesive, I was able to get it to crack and slide very easily. One member of my party triggered a small shallow avalanche in such snow around 9000 feet on a very steep north facing slope. These avalanches are quite manageable since they are so shallow. This avalanche ran for a hundred feet or so and entrained some new snow, but did not trigger anything deeper, and never posed a real threat. Other than that, I did not observe any instabilities in the snowpack. No red flags.
Unrelated to current conditions, but interesting: the Dry Fork slide path that runs off the S end of Cascade ran HUGE in February and left debris at least 5 times deeper on the Squaw Peak-Camelback Pass road than I have ever seen. It is 25-30 feet deep on the road, and overran the road by 100+ yards. A truly impressive slide.