Quick report
Sure looks and feels like winter out there! The recent 6 inches or so of new snow has certainly improved travel conditions, especially on shaded slopes. On southerly aspects, this new snow sits over a firm crust. About a foot of soft snow sits over the first major crust on the shaded half of the dial.
We spent a lot of time targeting the 2/13 and 2/7 interfacets. While we can find weak snow grains, snowpack tests and small slopes didn't produce anything worth mentioning. Today, in this area, the biggest concern we have is an uptick in winds, which started to drift snow at middle elevations. It made us wonder what's happening up higher?
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 3000
- Recent Snowfall
- 2
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
A very wintery day with intermittent snow showers, generally light winds, and a few brief moments of filtered sunshine. It felt like walking around in a black and white painting.
Snowpack
Since Friday, 2/13, the Paradise area has recieved about 6 inches of snow. On E-S-W aspects, this new snow sits over a 2/13 crust. The new snow was generally poorly bonded to this firm layer. In shaded terrain, the fresh snow adds to another 6 inches of soft snow from 2/7. That means there's about a foot of dry snow over the 2/7 crust. Numerous snow profiles, hand pits, tilt tests, and ECTs were used to poke and prod at the 2/13 and 2/7 layers. Tilt tests often failed easily on either small near surface facets or preserved large stellars. We weren't able to find any obvious buried surface hoar. Small slope tests and ECTs didn't provide any notable results. Similarly, small facets were sometimes found just below the 2/13 crust on sunny slopes and above the 2/7 in shaded terrain, but snowpack tests were unremarkable.
What to make of all this? Our overall takeaway was that there's weak snow in the upper foot of the snowpack, but today, where we looked, it wasn't producing any meaningful results.
Light to occasionally moderate SSW winds were blowing snow and forming drifts in a few localized areas. While we could find evidence of wind transported snow, we didn't find any wind slabs.
Travel hazards still pose a real challenge. Random holes, open creeks, bare ground, and exposed obstacles caused us to change our intended route several times.
Avalanche
No recent avalanche observed. We only managed to trigger one very, very small sluffsdespite travelling on numerous short, steep test slopes.