Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking, Rapid Warming
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>We avoided any steep slopes at first because the widespread wind slabs looked like they would pop out without much provocation. But as we started small and worked our way up, we found that they were not very reactive and they were much softer than they looked. They were like one of those dogs that looks real scary but turns out to be very friendly and nice. You could make nice turns right through them in soft, dry snow. What a pleasant surprise. I couldn't resist, though, when skiing down to do some good ski cuts through obvious wind deposits on several very small break-over test slopes about 40 degrees or more in steepness I was able to pop out a couple small, ankle-biters out on each of our runs, 2-6 inches deep, 10 feet wide that moved 10-15 feet. Certainly not big enough to fill out an avalanche observation. But yes, in larger, steeper, more consequential terrain, they could catch a person. So Moderate Danger will probably cover it today, but they will likely settle quickly. The strong, spring sun did make much of the snow on the sunny aspects a bit soggy, but not enough to cause problems, at least where we were, perhaps worse at low elevations. </p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>See above</p> <p>See above</p>
The snow conditions were actually much better than they looked when we first skied into the basin. The northeasterly winds yesterday and last night definitely had their way with most of the terrain in Mineral Fork with wind slabs and wind scouring visible on most slopes except in some of the west facing gully bottoms. The wind damage was quite widespread, but very obvious from the surface snow texture (sand-blasted looking snow is wind eroded snow and smooth, rounded snow is wind deposited snow--the dangerous stuff). But even though it looked like horrid conditions, it actually skied quite nice. The wind was just strong enough to move around some snow and cover up a lot of the previous tracks, but it was just gentle enough to leave most of it soft and turnable. Quite a nice surprise.