Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>It’s all there and getting worse.</p>
Unpleasant is the word that comes to mind to describe my afternoon in the Bald-Reid cirque. Winds were blowing from seemingly every direction at once, doing all sorts of weird things to the snow surface and making travel a bit nasty.
Old debris still visible from a large avalanche that broke below the Bald-Reid col provided a nice teachable moment. It was a textbook case of a thin snowpack with a wind slab atop a weak layer failing in steep, rocky terrain. It appears this tune is on repeat as the high altitude, wind-exposed terrain is once again loading up.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Winds were depositing snow in all kinds of weird-ass ways up there today, scouring some surfaces while creating touchy slabs right next door. One minute I wanted my ski crampons, the next some fatter skis. This was a big heads up that it’s going to be a minefield in the alpine as this storm gets going. </p> <p>Yep, I’m still here, that pile of totally unconsolidated facets that 2026’s been calling a snowpack. I know it looks like I have zero integrity but I’m telling you, you can trust me this time. I promise I can hold those wind slabs. </p>