Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
We snowmobiled at Ebbetts today. We noted how warm it was at the staging area and by the time we had made our way up to Kinney Reservoir a few of us had to shed some layers. On the southerly's we noticed a thin melt freeze crust at about 8200'. The further we climbed, the better the snow conditions were. The sky remained overcast for majority of the day. The wind was moderate and out of the SW. We found shelter in the trees low angle trees in NW-N-NE-E aspects where the snow was fun and dry. Roller balls and pinwheels were noticed on the entire ride up the road. Small leeward cornices in mirco-terrain features were beginning to show signs of cracking. We dug a pit on a NW aspect at 8800'. The top 15cm was F (fist hard) and composed of decomposing fragments with a very thin breakable crust on the surface. Buried SH (surface hoar) was observed about 4cm down from the surface and did result in a SC result on the first tap of our Compression test. Our shovel tilt test gave us planar results at 32cm down from the surface. We only probed to a depth of 230cm, however the slope we dug on was much deeper. Both Compression tests and our ECT yielded no signs of concerning instabilities and below our probe depth of 190cm the snowpack was showing signs of gaining strength. After we dug our pit to gain some knowledge of settlement in the snowpack, we set a couple rescue scenarios and practiced good habits as a crew that rides together frequently.