Quick report
Wet snow on solar aspects, moistening surfaces on northerly aspects, and large avalanches in the Chiwaukums. Lots of sun.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
Hot, sunny, clear, moderate winds from the east.
Snowpack
By 1:00pm at 5800' E the upper foot of the snowpack had been wetted down to the 3/9 interface. Small rounding facets were found just on top of this crust that was also starting to pool small amounts of water. The surface hoar that has been associated with the 3/9 layer was not found here. Below this layer the snowpack was dry. The 2/24 weak layer was found 104cm down and the EFC was observed at 120cm. Both weak layers had some degree of rounding facets associated with crusts. Stability tests yielded no interesting results. Boot pen was around 30cm, down to the 3/9 crust.
On an NW aspect at 5600' moist surface snow quickly transitioned to dry as I dug down through the top few centimeters of snow. On this aspect, the 3/9 interface was dry, and two ECTs targeting it resulted in ECTXs.
Avalanche
Several large to very large avalanches were visible in the Chiwaukums Range on SW and NW aspects of Big Chiwaukum and Snowgrass Mountain, respectively. The avalanche off of Snowgrass had a visible crown where as the start zone of the avalanche off of Big Chiwaukum was not visible. In the evening light a possible crown to the north of Ladies Peak (maybe Point 7592) was also visible. This was unable to be confirmed. Closer to Stevens Pass multiple loose wet avalanches up to D1.5 were visible, especially on steep solar aspects. No crowns were visible west of the Chiwaukums.