Quick report
- Aspect
- Northwest
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking
- Elevation
- 2804 m
- Slope Angle
- 28°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Winds from the west were rapidly loading lee slopes along the PC ridgeline. Although we didn't ski any of these even small rollovers produced shooting cracks and easily triggered small wind slabs. Larger slopes would have certainly produced larger avalanches.</p>
Other than weakness in new snow, in areas out of the wind, snowpack in the areas traveled had relatively decent structure for this time of year. Hand pits and probe poling showed an increasing density profile with depth. Hasty pit posted above also showed nicely increasing density profile and no weak basal facets. Profile looks somewhat similar to Mark's observation from Butler Fork on 12/9. I didn't spend much time looking at the interfaces between old snow but did not find any obvious clean shears.
That said, in the wind, it was a totally different story. Shooting cracks were common and it was easy to trigger small wind slabs on small slopes. Bigger slopes would have easily avalanched.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>As noted above, high PI rates/new snow + strong winds were quickly building sensitive wind slabs.</p>
In protected areas snow was nice and rode well. Areas with wind were dense and slabby. We did not observe grauple as noted in observations from LCC.