Quick report

Incline Peak

Avalanche.org observerCentral Sierra Nevada
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Observation photo 1Observation photo 2

Quick report

We toured Incline Peak along the conservative route out towards/along the summer trail. We saw no cracking and or collapsing. Tried to trigger a couple test slopes with no results. Found a good spot to dig a bit a ways off the skin track and away from anything that could degrade the quality of our results. PIt was dug at pin on observation. ~9100ft, NE, 22 degrees slope. Initially dug a small pit for a quick CT. When the CT failed in a sudden, planar manner just by resting the shovel on the surface before any taps were applied (CTV), we decided to dig a bigger pit for a proper ECT. ECT test yielded ECTP11 and failed on the same layer. Snowpack at our location was 220cm deep. The top 55cm (220cm -> 165cm) was new storm snow that was generally right-side-up and varied between 4F and 1F hardness. This snow was wet and dense, it appeared that the snow levels had risen above 9000ft in this area overnight. This new storm snow sat on top of 5cm of facetted, F- snow from the 1/26 storm, and this weak layer was resting on a 2cm thick solar crust (160cm - 158cm depth). Underlying the solar crust was right side up 4F -> 1F hardness snow. Failures both tests occurred within this facetted weak layer. We skied low angle terrain down from the summer trail to the creek from Ginny lake and out.