Quick report
The month of May started with a good cycle of melt-freeze, but recent days have been increasingly hot and the freezes variably strong. Wet snow avalanches have become increasingly large this week and have been gouging deeper into the snowpack, particularly on ENE-NE-N-NNW aspects (the "cold" slice of the compass). Many cornices are collapsing and failing (good triggers for larger slides). Heavy melt has arrived in shady, upper elevation terrain, as evidenced by numerous relatively small wet loose avalanches, and some larger wet slab avalanches (see photos). The wet slabs reported here are the first I've seen this spring (ignoring the March heatwave). Importantly, stout ice crusts formed in the early and mid-season are helping the snowpack to maintain some of its integrity even during times of heavy melt. This makes it hard to tell just how bad the wet snow problems are becoming, as the surface has remained quite supportable through the day in most places...spooky. In terms of coverage, the snowpack has (thus far) been holding up well during the melt. There is still a significant amount of snow above ~8,000'. There has been some amazing corn skiing in May, following on the heels of some excellent cold dry powder skiing to close out April. I'm anticipating more high-quality skiing if we can get back into some solid overnight freezes, but I'm currently treating large avalanche terrain with a heavy dose of skepticism until we get things to freeze and the meltwater to drain. Today's outing was a memorial walk with Terry. Two years now. We all miss you good brother.
Weather
Clear skies, light winds, hot temperatures.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9400 ft
Two slides, one approaching D2.5. Appeared to have occurred either May 8 or 9. Two obvious failure planes visible. Suspect the upper plane is the January drought surface and the lower plane is the 12/13 early-season weak layer.