Quick report
- Aspect
- Northeast
- Red Flags
- Collapsing
- Elevation
- 3170 m
- Slope Angle
- 9°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>We had one large collapse that stretched almost 100m between members of our party. This happened just as we approached the more sheltered northern aspect we were planning on skiing. I suspect that this was the facets from 40-35 cm directly under the upper October crust.</p>
We dug a snowpit right where we felt our big collapse to see what the struture looked like. Not our ussual type of pit, but interesting.
Hard to beat these bluebird days!
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The facets in the upper part of the October snow are suspect until proven otherwise on north aspects. More sheltered north faces up higher are probably still quite reactive, which keeps me thinking considerable for those faces, but a lack of non-human trigger mechanisms has it close to hitting 'moderate'. Other aspects with enough snow are probably pretty stable right now.</p>
There was 4-5" inches of soft snow from earlier on the week. The early Dec storm underneath is very supportable and this combo made for some hero snow where there is enough to make turns. We had one very large collapse once we approached the shallow north face we were planning to ski. We actually stopped and dug a pit right where it collapse to get an idea of what was going on, and to support a UAC research project (SCIENCE!). There was 43 cm of old snow from October that is a mess of crusts and facets. Our ECT failed underneath the first October crust, but did not propogate surprisingly. We did not have any other red flags, so this is kind of a mixed bag for making a call on snowpack stability with any uncertainty. You can be sure that on north sheltered faces there is probably facets somewhere underneath you - classic La Sals.