Gulf of Slides South Snowfields

In Gulf of Slides, we found a snowpack that was generally stable and I do not believe this area reached the Moderate hazard rating that I forecasted this morning. There seemed to be very little wind transport on these aspects, and new wind slabs were not observed. 

Importantly, our team did observe multiple buried layers of persistent grain types that could be concerning with new snow and wind loading tonight and prolonged sub-zero temperatures forecast for the upcoming week. Though the snow profile presented as a poor structure, it did not present as a significant avalanche problem today. See the snowpack section for more details. 

Instability tests in multiple snowpits revealed multiple layers of concern with propogating results. These results, however, were not translating into collapsing, shooting cracks, or avalanches. No other signs of instability were observed.

The overall height of snow at and above treeline was observed in multiple locations to be around 1.5 meters deep. There was a 5 - 10cm layer of soft new snow from last night resting on the old, hard snow surface. There was a poor bond between the surface snow and the old snow underneath, which was prone to sluffing and made skinning in steep terrain difficult. We did not observe any new wind slabs from the new snow last night. Instead, the new snow was soft and unconsolidated in the locations that we travelled through.

Digging into the snow, a consistently poor snowpack structure was found in multiple areas. Multiple layers of stiff, old wind slab are mixed in with thin layers of faceted or faceting snow grains and hard melt/freeze crusts. In my snowpit, I scored multiple propagating test results at ECTP11, ECPT12, ECTP12.  See the attached snowpack profile.  These results and the general snowpack structure are similar to the ones I found in the Lower Snowfields / Dutchess area yesterday.  While travelling in steep terrain, there was no cracking, collapsing, or avalanching and though the snow structure was poor, it was not an active avalanche problem today.