Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Instabilities appeared to be small and isolated, and we felt comfortable traveling in most steep terrain. Wind slabs from yesterday's winds were typically thin (<6") and easy to identify from their smooth texture and increased hardness. Some were hard slabs. Testing a couple of drifted features produced minor cracking or no feedback. The recent snow is still transitioning to wet snow at mid-to-upper elevations and remains dry on northerly aspects above treeline. It appeared that shallow, wet loose avalanches were possible to trigger on slopes with the right ingredients of steepness, sufficient recent snow to sluff, sufficient solar warming, and wind protection.
Skinning across isolated wind drifts produced minor cracking up to 5' long in hard wind slabs a few inches thick. A skier triggered sluff pulled out a very small wind slab.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Moderate ridgetop winds were swirling some snow around with minimal loading. Clouds increased from clear to scattered.
Snowpack
About 6" to 8" of settled dry snow above treeline on northerlies. Wind-protected east aspects above treeline had about 5" of recent snow that was getting wet by midday. The snowpack had a thick refreeze (50 cm) below treeline, and became trapdoor and unsupportive near the valley floor this afternoon.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Count
- 11
- Aspect
- SE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 11700 ft
A few more small wet loose avalanches ran today at higher elevations, with activity expanding to northeasterly aspects near treeline. A couple of small, thin natural wind slabs likely ran yesterday.