Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
We toured in the Mini Gash area on Saturday 1/3. Temperature was consistently above freezing, and snowpack was low. We hiked up from the lower trailhead and started skinning at 5800'. We dug a pit at 7600' on an E aspect. Our ECT failed below a crust about 30 cm below the surface (ECTP12). Our takeaway was that this crust could be reactive when buried under wind loaded snow and we opted to avoid the steep, wind loaded terrain at the top of the bowl. We observed occasional short (<1m) shooting cracks when skinning over small wind loaded features. Skiing was surprisingly good above 7000' in wind-recycled powder.