Quick report
Solar aspects had a crust on them in the morning and were starting to soften again by mid-day. Small loose wet avalanches were observed out of steep rocky solar aspects. A couple of small dry loose avalanches were observed in steep North facing terrain. We could see some cross-loading from previous wind in the upper alpine region, and small amounts of wind loading occurred this morning. All in all, the wind slab problem didn't seem to be present near treeline.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 27
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- light
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Breaking clouds around 10:00 becoming Scattered midday. Light winds out of the SW. Temperatures in the mid to upper 20's but felt quite warm in the sun!
Snowpack
I dug a pit on a NW aspect at 7800' and found 175cm/69" of total snow. There was 18" of snow that sat above the Rain Crust. The Jan. 4th Interface was about 100 cm/40" down from the surface and I found the snow at the interface to be gaining strength and rounding out nicely. I did not get propagation in my Extended column test, but the weak sugar snow at the ground is still alarming, even though you can make a snowball out of it.