Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
We both experienced whumpfing at various point during our tour and were able to get ~6' shooting cracks on test slopes
Weather
- Air Temp
- 26
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Rain Elevation
- N/A
- Recent Snowfall
- 4
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Temperatures in the twenties F, light breeze from the NW with moderate gusts, scattered cloud coverage, no precipitation
Snowpack
The Chugach State Park continues to be a wind-scoured landscape with low snow coverage and variable snow surface conditions. We found roughly 3" of fresh snow from the snow event over the weekend. Most of the new snow has been affected by the wind and has been transformed into a new "wind skin" layer on snow surfaces.
We dug two snowpits along the ridge of Gordon Lyon to target snowpack structures that represented wind-loaded start zones. We found 2-4 mm chained, striated depth hoar at the base of the snowpack beneath a stout pencil hard wind slab middle layer, and then several layers of thin wind-packed snow layers sandwiched between near-surface facet layers. All layers of the snowpack showed signs of faceting. We were able to get concerning test results (propagation) on the depth hoar at the base of the snowpack in our shallower snowpit (ECTP26). We got less concerning results (ECTN12 and ECTN16) on the upper layers of facets.