Convict Lake Area

It is a new, wintry world.

Very localized cracking in wind-drifted snow. A small collapse in a wind-drifted area near treeline that did not have persistent weak layers before the last storm. Several small collapses across a northwest-facing near treeline slope around 9700 ft. where the snowpack was shallow and the ground was rocky.

45 to 100+ cm of storm snow from 2/13-14. Various storm and wind interfaces with no persistent grains in the new snow. The new snow was generally upside-down with 4 Finger to Pencil hard wind slabs at the top and settling 4 Finger to 1 Finger snow over F hard early storm snow at the bottom. See photo.

I got propagation in the lower, F hard snow, in a hasty pit on the moraine. See photo.

The slab above our most concerning persistent weak layer in the places I traveled was soft. The weak layer is large, loose facets under a thin ice lens. Repeated snowpack tests demonstrated the potential for failure and propagation in this layer in one snow pit. Another pit, 100 yards away, where the overlying crust was thicker, showed non-propagating results. The slab varied on near treeline slopes that had old snow from 80 to 130 cm thick. See snow profile.

Some small fans of rollers near rocky areas on southeast and east aspects in the late morning. It was easy to trigger fans of rollers on and west aspects near and below treeline in afternoon. This is specific to areas where the surface was loose and un-wind affected, which is less common in the open terrain of this area. Tsurf got to 0 C, and my shovel-loads from digging became single rollers on a northwest aspect near treeline. Didn't see any natural wet loose activity.