Quick report
We traveled through many miles of untouched snow and did not experience a single collapse. However, we did observe evidence of widespread natural avalanche activity that occured on 2/24 and 2/25.
Weather
Lots of sunshine today, with passing bands of thin high clouds that did little to affect radiation input. We had a few periods of variable wind, but the day was largely calm even on summits. It was warm and pleasant up high, but rarely felt hot.
Snowpack
Starting to do some surface inventory in the lead-up to loading resuming this week. The general sense was that the wind really did a lot of work to beat up and stiffen surfaces in almost all alpine terrain. We did not have very many soft turns today, but the few we found up high were in faceting new snow on shaded aspects. Very firm windboard had begun to undergo some faceting as well.
Solar aspects have been taking a good cooking, but it didn't really feel like they were completely being baked into submission. We encountered southerly aspects after the day was warming and the sun was melting them, and it's always hard to tell how something will look once refrozen.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Count
- 10
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 8500 ft
Widespread avalanche activity from 2/24-25 avalanche cycle. Avalanches failed in heavily wind-loaded terrain and broke widely, thanks to persistent weak layers involved.