Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- isolated
Toured out of the west shore yesterday. On wind loaded test slopes we produced some cracking between 1’-2’ deep. While skiing a north slope at 9900’, my partner triggered a small wind slab. This was about a ft deep, a few feet wide, and ran about 500-600’ (r1-d1). We believe a faceted layer of old snow helped produce this small slide. We saw widespread surface hoar, with some large crystals (2cm) in the basins and near creeks. While skinning up an east slope at 8600’, we produced a massive whumpf. This area had a firm ice crust. While breaking trail, I broke through the crust, my partner then gave a stomp to the weak snow under the crust and the whumpf was produced. It took some serious force into the snow, but it seemed like almost the whole slope collapsed. On another north face in very steep, tight trees at 9000’, I triggered some loose, dry, sluffs that picked up a lot of snow and gouged deep into the snowpack. Our overall impression from the day was that there is a lot of weak snow with hard to predict variability, and this weak snow is keeping last weeks storm snow and many wind slabs from healing.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Type
- L
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 9000 ft
On another north face in very steep, tight trees at 9000’, I triggered some loose, dry, sluffs that picked up a lot of snow and gouged deep into the snowpack. (Lat/Lon not accurate)