Quick report
Continuing to document the historic Christmas eve avalanche cycle; we will be talking about this one for years to come! Every large slide I saw involved the early season facets that developed in the second half of November. I traveled over miles of untouched snow and experienced no cracking or collapsing. Surficial wet snow problems turned on today and yesterday. I observed a number of D1s and at least 3 x D1.5 slides that traveled a good distance. Wet snow problems were most reactive at middle elevations on top of the Christmas eve rain crust. No cracking, no collapsing, no obvious signs of instability....apart from the aftermath of the widespread D3 and larger avalanche cycle that occurred on Christmas Eve and early Christmas morning!
Weather
Beautiful day, flat calm at sunset. Lots of solar input throughout the day.
Snowpack
No obvious layers of concern in the upper snowpack, but I only dug down in one spot. Christmas eve rain crust fades out around 8,500' (its about a foot down at this point). Snowpack is 4-5 feet deep by 8,000'. Most of this is settled snow from mid-December storms. Wow.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Count
- 7
- Aspect
- NW
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9000 ft
Wow, what an avalanche cycle that was! Based on direct, daily field observations, weather station data, and publicly available observations, there are three periods of obvious recent activity: on the solstice, on Christmas Eve day into early Christmas morning, and late on the 27th into the 28th with the wind (these slides are generally smaller and thinner and didn't break into early season facets).