Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Small pockets of wind-loaded snow were easy to identify. When skied, the top 5cm of snow would fracture predictably and propagation was isolated. Several cornices have developed on the East aspect of the Crystal South ridge, and are beginning to form on the North and East aspects of the summit. Overall very stable. Wind-loaded pockets were obvious and cracking was isolated and predictable when skied. Everything else skied was cohesive and smooth with little sun effect on SSE aspects. W aspects of Crystal Peak had much more sun effect but were not skied.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 20s
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- N/A
- Recent Snowfall
- N/A
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Today's weather was cold-ish (28F at the Crystal base and probably ~20F at the Crystal Pk summit). Skies were clear and winds were W, 5-10 mph at the base and summit.
Snowpack
Still right-side-up based on hand test F to 4F from the surface to ~40cm. I set up a hasty compression test at my initial LAT/LON 30x30x40cm deep for a quick check on shallow stability of the sun-affected aspect. First test was CTE (7) at -4cm, continued test was CTM (17) at -20cm. Both layers collapsed and sheared uniformly (SC) through the 30x30 test block. I cut another 30x30x40cm block and pulled on the uphill side to see if any of the layers would shear. The block finally sheared around -35cm but less uniformly (RP) than the two previous tests. Upper elevations of Crystal Peak saw sun throughout the day and the SSE aspect was just beginning to form a light sun crust about 2-4cm thick. The rest of the snowpack was med/heavy powder.
Avalanche
Noticed one ~D2 loose avalanche path that appeared to start near a group of trees and exposed rocks. Debris field (~50x50x1M) at 46.91424, -121.49965. The debris was covered in a few cm of wind transported snow and relatively soft. Several small D1- slides were noted below exposed rocks on the SSE aspect of Crystal.