Tobacco Roots

While skiing in the tobacco roots today, we experienced cracking in the new snow between switchbacks. This only started to occur once the sun came out and warmed the snow. The sun only popped out a few times but it quickly warmed solar aspects and towards the afternoon, rollerballs could be seen on south slopes. Overall, the new snow had bonded well to the firm crust, our handpits revealed a thin layer of denser fresh snow an inch or two from the crust. We saw wind loading throughout the day, and north to east alpine terrain had formed wind pillows. We saw several d1-d1.5 storm snow avalanches that likely broke overnight or early this morning as the debris was covered by 3-4” of snow, these occurred on east aspects. One of these avalanches had a distinct crown and was around 20-30ft wide. The debris from these slides was soft. We saw one old, large wet slab that crossed the trail on the way in.

Quick report