Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
New snow and winds are creating heightened instabilities in specific terrain features. Variable conditions exist within the upper snowpack across the mountains. Assess terrain as you travel being mindful of changing conditions.
New recent snow instabilities and persistent weaknesses may overlap on steep upper elevation slopes. These deeper snowpack weaknesses are present around 2 feet deep near an early December rain crust, triggering this weakness is unlikely but of higher consequence.
localized isolated cracking in wind deposited spotsWeather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- ~3500
- Recent Snowfall
- ~15
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Mountain weather was above valley inversions with partly clear skies and sunny this morning turning to overcast. SW Winds were clam to light, increasing during the day with light active snow transport. Light S-1 snowfall through mid day.
Snowpack
At 5400’ at Ruby pass we found 15cm of recent snow on top of 12/18 rain crust, 1 cm (~0.5in) thick P hard. The 12/7 rain crust is down about 2’.
On our ridgeline travels around 6200’ we found recent wind deposited drifts on northerly aspects. We observed localized isolated cracking in these drifts on small test slopes and small rollovers. Cracking appeared stubborn to propagate across these small terrain features.
At 11:00am the sun was out warming Southerly facing surfaces above freezing and we saw a wet snow surface and loose wet instabilities occurring within recent overnight snow. By 2:00pm skies clouded over and the surface was refreezing, creating surface variability on the way down. Aspects other than due south remained light the dry on the surface with varying hardness depending on wind scouring or deposition.
At 6400’ E aspect, snowpack height is 190 cm (~5.5 ft). Recent soft snow, 20 cm (~8”), sits atop firm 4F hard snow from last weekend 12/18, no rain crust present here. 12/7 rain crust is down 60cm (2ft), crust is K hard and 1cm thick. The bottom underside of 12/7 crust is beginning to break down, small facets (0.5mm) still exist above and below the crust. Snowpit test results were resistant planar in the new snow and below 12/7 crust: CT12 RP down 20cm, CT21 BRK down 60 cm under 12/7 crust, and ECTX.