Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Rapid Warming
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>The change from yesterday's decent powder to today's goop was dramatic, which made us be watchful, even tho we were ascending clear avy paths where they were lower angle and the goo factor lowered as we climbed. However, as we got up higher towards the Reed Benson ridge where it gets a bit steeper we then started to wonder about recent wind loading. One quick hand pit at ~9400' indicated a slab that was fairly well bonded, but at the same elevation that was down canyon and therefore closer to the top of the ridge we got a slab to come out really easily, so we bailed before venturing higher/steeper towards the ridge. </p>
I don't think that buried surface hoar will be present with the next storm; wind and rain took care of any hoar development!
with continued high temps and precip could there possibly be a natural cycle on Friday? The layering isn't necessarily conducive to that, but it's such weird conditions.....
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>My recollection of wet slabs is that they take steeper slopes than the bullseye cold slab 38 degrees, and that seemed to bear itself out today. As we went over the kinda mandatory 40ish roll to reach the super-warm gooey bottom of the Day's drainage we kept to the trees and did cuts and got small slides to go; easily manageable but would be scary with more exposure. </p> <p>Could higher elevation wind slabs go with the extra provocation of spiking air temps? could those warm temps penetrate the surface above 9k? We weren't sure of the answers and didn't want to tickle that dragon by pushing up the last steeper pitch through the sweet spot to the ridgeline, so we waxed off well below the ridge. </p> <p>We were also careful to avoid the lower-elevation gullies and stay on the adjacent ribs; this is good terrain-trap-issue conditions. </p>
Below 8500 it was gooey to the point of barely able to slide on skis (as a friend pointed out: "good ACL-tearing snow"), but above 8500 - before noon, at least - it was slide-able and decent. But with each run the goo level rose a bit higher. And on steeper rolls down low - where the avy paths roll into the drainage - impressive "pinwheels" (chunks coming out of the snow; see pic) were forming that were creating small wet slides on their own, and our traversing cuts were doing the same.