Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Spent the day touring up Bertha Creek to ski Goldpan and Superbowl as a little loop. Our goals were to assess how things are bonding after recent big storms, understand the distribution of the wind slab problem better, and seek protected alpine powder. We found low density, soft surface snow throughout the day and good skiing. In our pit at 3600' in Goldpan we found a strong, homogenous snowpack in the top 5' with no concerning test results. Throughout our tour we saw several natural slab avalanches in Goldpan and Granddaddy and a few natural dry loose avalanches in steep, rocky terrain.
Observed evidence of large natural avalanches in Goldpan and in Granddaddy likely from the last storm event and 1/26 winds. While skiing Superbowl we observed some shooting cracks in a steep, wind-loaded gully feature just below ridgetop. Otherwise we observed no other red flags.Weather
- Air Temp
- 5
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Cold temps throughout the day with calm to light winds even at ridgetop. Skies were mostly clear throughout the morning until ~2pm when it became overcast and flat light.
Snowpack
Throughout the day we found mostly 6-8" of dry powder at lower elevations. Snow higher up was slightly more wind affected but still soft and good skiing overall.
Dug a pit in Goldpan at 3600' on a SW aspect and found a homogenous snowpack in the upper 5' with no distinct layers. In an ECT we got a propagating result after two overdrive taps 1.5' down on a storm interface layer.
Avalanche
- Size
- D3
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- SW
- Trigger
- NC
- Elevation
- 4200 ft
We found evidence of some small to large natural avalanches that appeared to occur over the past few days. Observed the evidence of a very large natural slab avalanche mid-slope on Granddaddy and several large natural slab avalanches in Goldpan. A few natural dry loose avalanches were observed on steep, rocky slopes in Goldpan as well. In addidion, on a south face of Cornbiscuit we saw evidence of a large glide avalanche that appeared to have occured during the last storm event.