Quick report
Recent strong winds have left a patchwork of surfaces in exposed alpine terrain. Wind slabs ranged from soft and reactive, to hard and stubborn in more exposed areas. Wet snow materialied on steep solar slopes at middle and lower elevations.
Instability was confined to wind loaded aspects (NE-E-SE) and solar slopes.Weather
- Air Temp
- Below freezing
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- 3000 ft
- Recent Snowfall
- 27 cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Wind speeds relaxed into the moderate range by mid-morning.
Snowpack
We went out for a short tour above Timberline. Right from the parking lot we found plenty of evidence of recent strong winds. Soft sastrugi and wind textured snow made up the surfaces above 5800 ft.
Wind drifted snow ranged from soft to hard across the terrain. Softer pockets appeared reactive, but these seemed more isolated in the terrain. The main story was the firmer 1F/P hard, hollow sounding wind slabs. These typically appeared stubborn in the areas we traveled, but we really didn't travel in any heavily loaded alpine terrain.
Afternoon warming melted surfaces on steep, solar slopes. Around 1 pm on my drive down the Timberline access road, I observed plenty of rollers and pinwheels shedding on road cuts.