Quick report
Broken mid-elevation clouds. Most of the cornices visible along the ridge were hard old ones that had been around a while, but there was a little bit of fresh growth from that wild little wind/snow event on 2/18. Photo: Alex Manfred
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Found some shallow, soft 4-6" wind slabs high up on the ridge near the summit of Raymond. These all seemed to have formed on Thursday or Yesterday - there simply wasn't any snow available for transport today. They were well bonded to the underlying crust, but enough to keep us on our toes when considering line choices and consequences. These shallow slabs were limited to the top 20 feet or so of vertical on the lee side of the ridge. I would think that they will become increasingly stubborn over the next few days.</p> <p>Wet sluffs and maybe some small wet slabs on steep terrain at low and mid elevations could be an issue the next few afternoons if temps are as warm as they were today.</p>
Very pleasant riding conditions on NE facing terrain on Raymond - ~4" of heavy but dry-ish snow glued onto a supportable crust. Anything that saw sun yesterday has a stout ski supportable melt-freeze crust. Not very exciting to ski, but easy travel.
Snow surface was very damp at lower elevations even in the shade due to high overnight temps. Didn't see any natural wet activity but skiing was producing lots of rollerballs and wet sluffs even on mellow terrain.