Quick report

Goat Lake Basin

Avalanche.org observerWest Slopes South
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Quick report

Day started off sunny, but clouds started to roll in mid-morning, exactly as forecast. Still, never got super cloudy, more just filtered light. At our location, light winds out of the SW were blowing most of the day, but felt like it shifted more towards the east in the late afternoon. Performed several hand pits on a variety of aspects and elevations with no notable results. While layers could still be felt in the snowpack when probing with a pole, we were unable to make them do anything interesting. Seemed to indicate that storm slab instabilities were settling down as described in the forecast. S, SW, and W aspects we traveled on all had sun crusts, except where shaded by trees. Most of these slopes had at least two crusts, one on the surface (not ski supportable) and another stronger crust (somewhat ski supportable) maybe 4-6 inches down. NE and N slopes had evidence of wind loading. True N slopes had older, harder cornices at ridgeline, and presumably the same applied to wind slabs below. The NE slopes seemed to have newer, softer cornices and wind deposits, and the wind loading also didn't seem as severe, at least where we were. We found faceted snow on the surface in some shaded areas. It wasn't incredibly widespread, but wasn't that hard to find either. Overall, impression of stability was pretty good. We spent a significant portion of our day in avalanche terrain, and saw essentially no signs of instability.