Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Today's goal was to work with the limited visibility and enjoy the new snow. We wanted to get up and take a look into the higher elevations, but obscured skies and light to moderate snowfall kept our options limited. We decided to head up Stairstep in hopes the alders might provide us with some additional definition. An old skin track made route finding easier, and we were rewarded with some soft turns on the descent. On the ascent, we encountered deep, punchy facets until about 2500 ft where we started to notice some thin wind-slabs formed by recent strong winds. Soon after this we encountered a couple of isolated collapses. If we kept to the ridge, where the snowpack was thinner from recent scouring, travel was generally easier. Above about 3000 ft the wind had a bit more strength and bite, but observed transport was minimal. We dug two pits on generally east and northwest facing aspects and found evidence of recent strong winds and faceting that are contributing to a current Persistent Slab problem, see snowpack notes for details. The descent was surprisingly pleasant, with a skiff of new snow improving conditions greatly. Although we avoided generally wind-loaded aspects, we found consistent turns until returning to the alder zone where the snow was much more punchy. 1" of new snow fell during our tour, combined with 3" that fell early morning. New snow felt moist, gloppy, and stuck to our skis around 2000'.
Outside some isolated collapsing, no instabilities were observed. The last reported avalanche was remotely triggered near Govt on 1/8.Weather
- Air Temp
- 22
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 3100'
- Recent Snowfall
- 6
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Snow showers lingered until about 1:30pm today. At lower elevations, this translated to wet travel and sticky snow. Above around 3000ft the winds became more noticeable and contributed to some light drifting and cold fingers. On our drive down the road we observed a short period of light rain.
Snowpack
We dug on either side of Stairstep Ridge on generally east and northwest aspects. On the east aspect we found a very thin (55cm), stripped snowpack with a recent thin (5cm) windslab above a generally faceted snowpack. Test on this aspect indicated the potential for failure under the wind slab, but propagation was not observed.
On the northwest aspect, the snowpack and recent wind slab were both much deeper, about 100cm and 20-30cm respectively. On this aspect, snowpit tests produced propagating results deep within the faceted layers towards the bottom of the snowpack. See pictures for details.