North side of 4068

While touring up the north side of 4068 we experienced lots of cracking and collapsing on the leeward aspect where the combination of new storm snow and wind loading was happening. Our goal was to assess the stability of the snowpack due to the newly added stress from the current storm. There was about 8" of new snowfall since yesterday, and the strong winds have continued throughout last night and into today. Lots of snow transport and wind loading was happening on specific terrain features (predominantly North aspects). We observed light snowfall and moderate to strong winds along our tour path and witnessed intense flagging on ridge tops. No signs of natural avalanches observed today outside of some small new cornice shedding, however, the snowpack was reactive along our tour.

Due to the previous lack of snow in Hatcher Pass, our route consisted almost entirely of a new snowpack structure, with a notable 10cm of depth hoar at the bottom. A mostly right-side-up snowpack was covering a thin layer of weak facets at the ground. On those weak facets at the ground is where we experienced the collapsing during our tour. We dug a pit at 3000ft in a wind-loaded feature where we got pit results in our extended column tests on isolation. No taps were required for our snowpack test to fail on those weak facets on the ground. Our snowpack is at its breaking point for the current stress being added to it from this storm, and it will need time to adjust to the new load. Expect the avalanche danger to continue to rise as another strong pulse of new snow and wind move in this evening.