Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Pretty much every rollover and steep slope that I ski cut today produced a shooting crack about 4-5 inches deep, and it got progressively worse as the morning went on and more snow was deposited. </p>
It was a wild morning in the mountains. Snow, wind, sprindrift, and shooting cracks on ever little slope you stepped on over 35 degrees. I skied up along side the lower 2/3 of Eight Ball with another large party, but everyone elected, wisely, to not continue up into the steep upper terrain. I am sure that it would have produced avalanches today, especially towards noon as the wind activity reached its peak. My partner and I ski cut several slopes and rollovers and they all produced shallow slabs, and this was in sheltered terrain. I can imagine that in exposed terrain the slab thickness would be many times greater. Not a good day to stick your neck out in high consequence terrain. Things cleared up in the afternoon, but with the volume of snow that was being transported, I would give the wind slabs another day to mellow out before tackling terrain of consequence. Avalanche hazard was HIGH today on all slopes steeper than 35 degrees a mid and upper elevations. It will be CONSIDERABLE tomorrow. Expect to find wind slabs everywhere.
Snowpack
I'm guessing at the new snow depth. It was hard to tell with all of the wind transport, and with very little differentiation between the new snow and the Saturday snow. The bottom line is that there is a lot of new snow, enough to obscure the tips of 188 megawatts. That's deep.