Quick report
- Aspect
- Northwest
- Elevation
- 2316 m
- Slope Angle
- 16°
At low elevation there is a stout rain crust midpack (~50cm up from the ground) from around Christmas . It varies but we noted it to be about 10cm thick. Underneath this there is a jumble of old melt freeze crusts and rounding facets. Above that is a settling slab that is right side up.
The thing that suprised me most was winds getting in to lower elevations and transporting snow. It didn't take much slab on the weak surface snow to get small cracks at our feet.
Overall it is still scrappy at lower elevations, but it beats not skiing!
Photo 1: Surface hoar at around 6,800'
Photo 2: Snow pluming off relatively high ridges
Photo 3: Wind filling in recentr tracks
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Moderate wind speeds where moving snow in the low elevations we travelled in, we could see winds pluming snow off the higher ridge lines.</p> <p>Not new snow, but loose snow avalanches. On the solars we say evidence of wet loose avalanches from yesterday. On steep rolls we where able to induce facetalanches. The snow surface has weakend significantly in sheltered areas.</p> <p> </p> <p>I did not include PWL because in our travels and digging it did not seem to be an issue at low elevations.</p>
In the sheltered areas it was loud pow with weak surface snow. Crusts from yesterday where not terrible but S and SW was taking on some heat. Up higher there was wind affect on the west aspects we touched.