Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
I experienced cracking and collapsing of the snowpack in areas with either a well-developed weak layer, a wind-thickened slab, or both.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- settled 20-30cm (more snow as you climb in elevation)
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Afternoon wx obs: calm and generally clear when tour started around noon. A few whisps of high stratus around, doing little/nothing to limit incoming solar radiation. Clouds built over the Sawtooths and Western Smokys in the late afternoon, eventually pushing across the pass and into the Boulders. Winds picked up and there was a brief period of S1 snowfall around sunset with no significant accumulation.
Snowpack
This was quite a warm day. At lower and middle elevations, melting of the surface snow was occurring on all slopes that faced towards the sun, even just a bit. Flat areas appeared to remain dry. I observed many roller balls and some small loose wet dribbles along the pass.
In sheltered terrain, storm snow from the weekend was settling into a 20-30cm thick slab that appeared to be fairly homogenous and well-internally bonded. The older snow underneath presented as a mix of facets and crusts, with a more prominent crust near the ground. Facets on top of this package of snow were well developed and very weak. I found enough older snow underneath the new snow to be concerned with persistent slab issues by 8,500' on a relatively warm slope (W). I suspect on completely shaded slopes that you'd find this combination extended further down in elevation.
The weekend's storm produced widespread wind destruction in the Boulders. Predominant wind direction was NW/W. This removed a lot of snow from upper portions of northerly-starting zones and groomed much of this snow onto southerly faces. Surfaces in the alpine are a mixed bag. In places, the wind has eroded down to the icy early-November crust. In others, there are layers of aging, faceting wind slabs resting on these older crusts. I did not observe any evidence of instability with these older slabs.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Count
- 5
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 10000 ft
I observed many avalanches that occurred during the weekend's storm. My observations into the Smokys were not great, due to poor lighting. I'm confident there were at least a few slabs in there I couldn't see.