Quick report
- Cracking
- Observed
- Collapsing
- Observed
Since Evan's last visit to this area at the start of the month, there was only an inch or two of new snow on top of his tracks. Nevertheless, there are still a few slopes that have collected thin hard slabs, while in most upper elevation slopes, the snow was blasted away while lower elevations have remained protected. The slopes holding hard slabs are fairly easy to recognize: concave gullies with smooth, stiff surfaces (1F or Pencil hard) and ski or boot penetration is nearly zero. In contrast, eroded slopes are rippled, all weak facets with occasional wind crusts, and boot pen is to the ground. Several collapses in the drifted features warned us to stay off of consequential slopes where a small, but hard slab, would carry you downslope.
While targeting several steep, suspect looking gullies, we produced several collapses and shooting cracks involving last week's hard slabs 2" to 10" thick; one of which resulted in a small avalanche. These were in E/NE facing, concave features in open near treeline terrain with productive fetches. One collapse appeared to involve the Turkey Slab on a similar aspect but on a slope that wasn't heavily drifted; it involved a softer slab about 16" thick collapsing on basal weak layers.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
This area has picked up about 1" to 2" of new snow since 12/9, which was well redistributed by previous winds last week above ~11,200'. Sunny, mild day today.
Snowpack
A wind warzone above 11,500' or so. The snowpack is mostly weak and faceted, with wind crusts or thin hard slabs capping large grained facets and depth hoar in more concave features. Snow surfaces generally get harder and the riding quality gets worse the higher and more exposed you get.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R1
- Count
- 4
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 12800 ft
We intentionally triggered a small, hard slab in crossloaded NE facing gulley. There were a couple of similar natural avalanches in this area that likely ran during the big wind events sometime last week, also D1 in size.