Silver Peak

We began our tour up Pole Creek to Silver Peak at about 10:25 AM with mostly clear skies and temps in the mid-30s. We were looking to observe existing wind slabs on northerly aspects and see how much snow might be available to be transported from those aspects by the forecasted shift to strong NE winds tonight and tomorrow. We found up to around 4 inches of soft snow on sheltered and wind-loaded N - NE aspects as we ascended the NE ridge of Silver Peak. Most of our ski kicks on wind-loaded features and test slopes only produced stubborn minor cracking. However, we did get one wind-loaded test slope to fail on the old crust from before the new snow of the last couple of days. The upper open slopes, the top of the peak, and the southerly aspects we saw were mostly scoured to crust or rocks. Still, about 1 to 4 inches (3 and 10 cm) of relatively soft snow lingered on ENE to N aspects. This soft snow could server as material for new wind slabs when the strong NE winds forecasted for tonight and tomorrow transport it across the ridges. We observed moist to wet snow up to ~7400' on NE aspects at about 2 PM as we made our final descent back to the truck.

The wind-loaded test slope that failed was on an ENE aspect at 7214'. It cracked ~ 20 cm deep on the crust of the old snow surface from before the March 11-12 snow. See photo.