Quick report
Good day of skiing. Heavy snowfall in the AM, temperatures began to rise in the late morning, still snowing in the early afternoon. The recent storm snow from the last three days has consolidated into a soft storm slab 20-25cm thick on top of a melt freeze crust. In our travels yesterday and today we observed that this melt freeze crust was more pronounced on solar aspects, but still soft enough for the weight of a skier to break through. This interface of the recent storm snow and melt freeze crust is where we saw small (D1) storm slab avalanches moving today. The storm slab avalanches were isolated to short convex terrain features near 35 degrees. No other signs of instability beyond the SS D1s
Weather
- Air Temp
- 27-33
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- 4400' at 0800
- Recent Snowfall
- HN24 15cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Calm, Heavy snowfall AM, warming in the afternoon.
Snowpack
Ski penetration 15-20 cm, Boot penetration 30-60cm. Hand pits and test pit showed a soft storm slab on a melt freeze crust down 20-25cm. No conclusive test results with hand pits on this layer due to lack of slab structure (fist + hardness). ECTN 4 down 25 on this interface. Average hight of snow 150cm.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R1
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- NW
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 6400 ft
Soft storm slabs D1 isolated to steep convexities.