Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
Mt. Hood finally picked up a nice refresh of 9-12 inches of new snow over the 2/7 crust. In typical Mt Hood fashion, this new snow is quite dense and wind-affected above 5500 ft or so. Active wind loading kept wind-drifted slopes touchy, and these same areas produced a few (human & explosive-triggered) soft and hard slab avalanches through the day. These slabs ranged from 1 ft at middle elevation to 2-3 ft in more heavily wind-drifted, alpine terrain. Most of these avalanches (and snowpack tests) failed on mid-storm weak layers above the 2/7 crust. The sun would occasionally poke out, but it didn't seem like enough for any wet loose. There's a chance some steep sun-exposed slopes lower down may have a crust after today from those intermittent sunbreaks.
Instability was mostly confined to wind-loaded terrain above 6000 ft.Weather
- Air Temp
- High 20s
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- 3500
- Recent Snowfall
- 25-30 cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Snow showers tapered mid-day, but west winds stayed steady in the moderate range for much of the day. The afternoon felt quite pleasant with intermittent sunbreaks and snow showers.
Snowpack
The 9-12 inches of new snow that fell over the 2/7 crust was quite wind-affected above 5500ft. Active drifting kept these slabs fresh and reactive in the areas we traveled. Test slopes produced cracking, small avalanches, and snowpack tests easily failed on mid-storm weak layers, and would occasionally propagate in more wind-drifted terrain.
The 2/7 crust is easy to identify by probing around and ranges in thickness and hardness depending on elevation. Most of the test results failed a few cm's above the 2/7 layer.
Pits:
NE @ 6600 ft: HS: 190 cm: 40-50 cm of new/drifted snow resting over the 2/7. Snowpack tests failed easily and propagated on low scores (ECTP2 - 20 cm down / CT1, SC - 20 cm down). The mi
E @ 5800 ft: HS: 115 cm: 30 cm of precip particles over the 2/7 crust. Snowpack tests also highlighted a couple mid-storm weak layers about 15-30 cm below surface, mainly consisting of rimed stellars( CT3, SC, 30 cm down just above the 2/7 crust / ECTN12, 30 cm down). Below the 3 cm-thick 2/7 crust, I found some weaker melt forms (4F), but they didn't yield much in the tests. The lower and mid pack is strong and mainly consists of melt forms and rounds.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2.5 R2
- Type
- HS
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AE
- Elevation
- 7000 ft
An explosive triggered hard wind slab around 7000 ft on an E aspect. This avalanche propagated widely with crown depths ranging from 2-3 ft.