Quick report
- Red Flags
- Rapid Warming, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Few inches of graupel that fell at the start of the storm underlying the new snow is a bit troubling but it doesn't seem to have anything malicious enough sitting on top of it to cause problems at the moment.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The daytime warming today was our major concern heading out this morning, but it seemed to be causing relatively few problems. We saw a few small natural wet sluffs and rollerballing on terrain on the SW-SE side of the compass, but that was about it. Should decrease into tomorrow with the colder weather and snow, but the terrain where this was a concern today will have atrocious skiing, so perhaps a moot point.</p> <p>Ski cuts produced some rather impressive sluffs on steep N facing terrain at the top of Coalpit running fast, far, and big. It was a manageable problem, but getting in the way of one of these would mean getting knocked off your feet at best, and caught, carried, and partially buried at worst. Staying out in front of this sort of powerful, fast-moving sluff was not even a remote possibility for us mere mortals.</p>
Excellent riding conditions on NE-NW facing. South facing terrain, as well as due East and West facing terrain had a punchy melt freeze crust. However, it was cloudy enough yesterday afternoon you could wrap pretty far around the compass towards the west and still find good dry, crust-free riding conditions, as long as there was a slight northerly component to the aspect. Some faceted loud powder found on sheltered N facing terrain.