Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>We were fortunate to skin up under falling snow with no wind. By 7000ft, we found some wind. As the snow was great below that, we felt no need to go higher. As we made laps, winds increased, leading to increasing surface density and more surfy snow and/or wind skin on top. Based on how hard the winds began ripping by the time of our exit, I feel pretty confident that wind slab and cornice formation was happening somewhere unseen above us.</p>
Hard to stick the landing on the bunny hop with seemingly bottomless snow.
Snowpack
Snow was moderate density powder--not blower cold smoke, but not too heavy. The upper 5-10cm was a bit more dense than what lay below, yielding something attempting to be storm slab, but rather more like chunky sluffing. Another 10-15cm below this lay some graupel, with more graupel in the mix a bit elsewhere. Perhaps something to watch moving forward. Otherwise, poking, hand pits, and test slopes were pretty unreactive.