Quick report
We found a wide variety of skiing and riding conditions from breakable wind crusts, drizzle crusts, to firm supportable thicker wind crusts. While we didn't see any recent avalanche activity, we did see a handful of small persistent slab avalanches that likely failed sometime during last week's stormy weather. These slides were far from widespread; these all seemed to be in very steep, craggy terrain where the wind likely had some influence. Digging in similar terrain, we found a shallow snowpack and had propagating results in stability tests.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- previous
Clear skies, cool temperatures, and light variable (mostly NE winds).
Snowpack
Surfaces/Upper Snowpack: Surfaces were a hodgepodge of breakable wind crusts dappled with rain, firmer supportable wind crusts, and softer old snow in sheltered terrain. Any upper-pack crusts from the January warmup and rain have mostly faceted away or become one with surface wind or drizzle crusts.
Basal Weak Layers: Unsurprisingly, we found weak snow near the ground anywhere we probed. We tried our best to match the aspect and elevation of the more recent slides mentioned above. Here we found 115cm of snow, and well-developed, lingering facets near the ground. Stability tests yielded ECTP 15 results.
Avalanche
We saw several avalanches: old persistent slabs that likely failed near the start of January, more recent small wind slabs in isolated terrain, and a handful of dry loose slides in steep terrain. Additionally, we saw a 2 more recent avalanches on NW-facing slopes, one near the Bald Mtn ridge, and another on the N side of Bullion—it's hard to date these more recent slides, the crowns were crisp enough for me to believe that they failed within the last stormy period (Feb 10th-Feb 14th/15th).