Quick report
2-3 feet of snow covers the middle and upper elevations. Despite the sun and temperature inversions, snow surfaces remained mostly dry. We saw minimal concerns for avalanches. Shallow coverage and travel hazards (exposed rocks, creeks, etc) were the main concern.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Calm wind. Mostly clear skies becoming scattered, high, thin clouds by 11a. Temperature inversions around 6,000ft: above high temps reaching the upper 20's, and below staying in the low 20's to teens.
Snowpack
Most snow surfaces remained dry and soft at all elevations, including on south aspects. Only south slopes >45 degrees and near exposed rocks had surface crusts. In meadows and near creeks, we found surface hoar and very weak surfaces.
At upper elevations, there was no recent drifting and minimal evidence of past wind transport.
Above 6,000ft, the average snow height was 110cm. Profiles on NE through SE aspects found dry, facetting snow resting on a thin, but supportive crust.
A profile at 6,600ft, NE
HS 103cm.
18cm of F- dry near-surface facets rested on a 5cm P hard crust. Below this, a 3cm thick layer of facets was sandwiched between another crust. The layers below 78cm were hard, melt forms to the ground. While most were frozen, layers in the lower 46cm of the snowpack were moist and unfrozen. This snowpack currently has few layers of concern; however, the surface and upper 25cm could be a weak layer if/when buried. See profile graph.
Avalanche
Minor dry sluffing came off of ski turns. We saw a few natural loose dry avalanches on steep SW, 7,000ft near Cutthroat Pass. These may have been 2 days old, from 11/28.