Name Dropping

southrockies , Friday 21st February, 2025 4:15PM

We went for a short ride past Window Mountain and into Racehorse Pass today. The southwest winds had really picked up, but there was also plenty of evidence that previous northerly winds had stripped many alpine slopes in the area. The snow was generally hard windslab over soft facets that made for less than ideal sledding in any open areas. We saw some older debris and signs of small, natural windslabs. These were difficult to age, but we guess they ran in the last couple of days. We dug our profile in a deep, wind loaded pocket at treeline and had no results in our extended column test under the hard mass of old windslabs. This may not be the case in more shallow, faceted areas where the persistent problem might be lingering.