Quick report
Traveling up to Point six, looking into Little Alaska you could see a fairly well defined wind slab on the North East lower Ridge. Lookin gout onto Burgundy ridge you could see several point releases correlating to the thinner rock bands they started from. AS we traveled down Grouse Ridge roller balls became very prevalent. Each pit the buried surface hoar was noted between all aspects. We dug two pits at 7800 feet on a North aspect on a 28 degree slope from 11:25 am till 12:30 pm. We had a CT11, and CT 24 on two separate tests that were both sudden planar on the buried surface hoar. We also had a CT 12 resistant planar on the melt freeze crust approximately 30cm below the buried surface hoar. We had no propagation in our three tests in our extended column test. We dug another pit on a South aspect at 1:45 pm at 7500 feet on a 28 degree slope. There was a CT 28 resistant planar on the melt freeze crust. We had no propagation in our ECT at this site.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 32
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
The weather matched the in filed observations other than wind direction shifted heavily throughout the day. Ranging from South West to East.
Snowpack
On our North aspect we had a height of snow at 230cm. We dug our three pits on the north aspect to 145cm. We did one hand hardness test that showed a right side up snowpack. There was a clear layer of buried surface hoar in all three pits. The one pit dug on the South aspect had a height of snow of 130cm. There was a significant amount more moisture present in the snowpack comparatively o the North aspect we dug in. Several large roller balls trailed us as we descended Grouse Ridge. Although we did not see any propagation in our pits, the prominent well developed surface hoar in conjuncture with the buried near surface facets and melt freeze crust led to below 30 degree travel and terrain choice.