Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
After we climbed out of the valley bottom, we experienced no large collapses. The snowpack structure is poor and the snowpack is not nearly deep enough for producing gentle gradients. There is no real indication that our weak layer is healing, more that the slab is losing some strength from faceting. This slab is dense enough that collapsing the weak layer underneath takes a good bit of force where it is laterally connected.
Collapsing was specific to low elevation terrain, and even there it was not nearly as frequent as in previous days. We experienced no collapses in middle and upper elevation terrain.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Thin, high clouds present for much of the day, decreasing around sunset. These slighly limited amount of solar input. Winds were calm.
Snowpack
Our primary objective was to check in with our 11/30 weak layer. HS = 70-75cm on mid elevations shadies. Stability tests were failing in the middle of the 11/30 package, down 50cm. The bottom half of this slab is 1F+. We received ECTP 13 and 19, and CPST 23/100 END and 29/100 END (saw got hung up on a stick on this second one. Basal crust down 60cm.
Surfaces: intense faceting of the snow surface (really most of the snowpack) below the level of the inversion. Above this, the faceting was still pronounced, just not quite as bad. We observed a lot of SH around on the surface. Much of this presented signs of multi-phase growth, with some increase in shear strenght due to intergrowth of SH xtals. Based on our obs today, it did not look like we were headed for a specific SH problem in this area, but the surface is so weak that we will have plenty to worry with additional loading.
Avalanche
We observed some D1 debris below the north face of Eureka peak, with no obvious crowns above. Suspect these failed as thin wind slabs and crowns were subsequently filled in/obscured.