Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
At the beginning of the tour the winds were the most noticable impact on the day. In the parking lot the wind and snow were swirling around in a chaotic mess, this was indicative to the whole rest of our tour. As we pushed out towards Elephant's back the snow transportation was intense and we started to investigate the formation of wind slabs within the Carson Pass area. As we traveled below tree line snow was being pushed around on the surface but wasn't producing any indications of slabs in this area. As we climbed higher into near tree line terrain I was able to find several pockets of wind slabs. The deepest one was up to 6" and propagated in front and behind me a few feet each way. On other small features, cracks formed as I approached the loaded areas and eventually failed under my weight. As we continued out to Elephant's back wind speeds seem to increase in open areas were one would need to lean and focus to not let the wind unexpectedly knock you over. The amount of errosion was also significant leaving elevated snowshoe and skin tracks up to 4-6" deep. Large patches of sustrugi and wind effected snow were connected to large patches of icy erroded sections in above tree line terrain all the way up to Elephant's Back. Looking upon the face there was an intense amount of snow transporting off the ridgeline above and blowing snow in a directions. The cornices above were not building but erroding away as we sat there, there was no signs of recent debris in this bowl just more raised tracks from skiers and snowboarders long ago. On our exit we avoided the idea of riding and traveled via skins back down. Once we reached the parking lot around 1400 we all noticed that wind had decreased and was now aloft and no longer blowing on the surface.
Small wind slabs up to 6" thick were cracking and propagating under ski cuts.Weather
- Air Temp
- Above freezing
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Cloud cover was broken with long periods of sunshine follwed by long periods of overcast. The winds were intense near and above tree line. The winds were erratic seeming to come from all directions at times but primary direction was out of the W-SW. Air temps remained above freezing throughout our tour.
Snowpack
We stopped to dig a pit on a NW aspect at 8800' to check in on the PWL. The facets at the bottom are moist and compressible at this location. I targeted the top of this layer and preformed a PST and had no results PST 100/100 (arr). Only at the very end of the test did we see a little movement.