Observation: Brighton Perimeter

Finally some snow! What a treat it was to be in a winter wonderland today with about 8" of new snow this morning. The day started out with a gorgeous bluebird morning with temps in the mid-20s and hovering around there most of the day. Our group got to watch the Gazex trigger an avalanche on Mt. Millicent, so exciting that patrol teams are out and busy with mitigation work after a 5 week lull.

Our travels took us to Dog Lake outside of Brighton today and the snowfall (graupel) started to pick up to S1 around 1200 and intensified to S3 for a short period from 1315 to 1400. We observed a nearby snowboarder triggered avalanche that failed in the new snow and was quite small (R1D1).

There were three distinct crusts in our snow pit: 1 - A breakable crust about 30cm down. This crust was distinct on our test wall (NE) and our hand hardness wall (E) but noteably nonexistent on the West facing wall of our snowpit. Talk about spatial variability! Our stability tests, although nonpropogating, both failed right below this crust in a layer of faceted graupel among other weak grains. This is the layer I'm most concerned about. 2 - The New Years crust 35cm from the ground. 3 - The crust we've all come to know quite well - the CERC

Overall, I was surprised by our lack of stability test results and grateful for the return of winter.

Photo 1 - Hand hardness Photo 2 - Avalanche our group observed