Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- widespread
Very tender snowpack and dangerous conditions. We had to tiptoe through the terrain to avoid traveling on or below steep, open slopes. We had planned to ascend through dense trees to gain the Union Chutes/Coyote Chutes ridgeline and get feedback from wind-drifted slopes. However, instabilities in relatively tight trees - terrain that is rarely unstable - caused us to back off our plan and retreat.
Frequent collapses, some rumbling across large terrain features and remotely triggering avalanches from a distance. Many collapses occurred while skinning, some required some amount of stomping. These instabilities were all about 2 feet deep, failing on our well-developed January dry spell facets.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Snow transport on Whetstone this afternoon; no drifting snow below treeline where we traveled.
Snowpack
Recent slab formation is around 2 feet thick below treeline and up to 4-finger hard. On the shady side of east and northeast aspects, the slab rests on thin crusts on facets or just facets (January drought layer). The drought layer is very weak (2mm in size). See image below.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Type
- SS
- Count
- 14
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 10000 ft
Remote, sympathetic, and ski cut 6 persistent slabs today on E to NE aspects below treeline, breaking 2 feet deep. A couple of large natural persistent slab avalanches likely ran during yesterday's increased winds, along with many natural avalanches that ran during the storm.