Virginia Lakes - Red Lake Trees

Strong wind, blowing snow, and shooting cracks today. We toured above Red Lake in the East facing trees and topped out at 10,520 ft. Gale force wind from the South was swirling around and loading up the east-facing aspect we were on. Several shooting cracks and whumps were seen and heard. We kept our slope angle to the terrain below 30 degrees. Nearby on a north-facing aspect above Red Lake, we saw evidence of a natural slide the presumably went during the wind that has been loading the past 24 hours . The wind slab problem was in our face and hard to avoid. The persistent slab problem is still difficult to navigate. This area overall is a patchwork of snow and the distribution of the basal facets were not uniform.  Daily avalanche forecast for the Virginia lakes basin south to Bishop Creek can be found at https://www.esavalanche.org/

Rapid wind loading in this area. Shooting cracks in the fresh wind slab.

Snowpack distribution in this area varied considerably,  with considerable amounts of bare ground and wind-drifted snow in the Virginia Lakes area. 

ECT's revealed Q 1 and Q2 breaks within the fresh wind slab 

ECTP11 Q1 Down 20 CM

ECTP22 Q2 down 50 cm

The height of snow in the area varied from 90-160 cm