Quick report
Beautiful day in the Swan range playing on the spider, the creek keeps filling in a bit more each time I make it out here. Far less elk weed loving to get in here than a few weeks ago. Plenty of old rollerball debris and possibly some sub D1 wet slides from the sun a few days ago. Snow was good riding, skin track was a little dust on crust on the way out. Getting back to the car, we looked back at the Swans to notice all the mountain peaks showing the trailing streak of white indicative of some major wind transport going on loading up the East Side of the Swan range. The West/Northwest facing aspect we skinned up and rode was stable, on some of the ridge that faces more NW we found small unreactive wind slabs. Sluff was light and manageable, confined to mostly gullies and wind sheltered terrain.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 16
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 11
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Small snow flurries intermixed with periods of spotty sunshine and blue skies.
Snowpack
Our quick pit showed that the top 4-5 inches were blower pow (cold smoke), then a solar crust from our sunny days that was relatively weak. Below that lies roughly 3 inches of soft snow that lies on top of another small crust. The real beast is lurking 3-4 feet down in a very hard layer that likely was formed from our extreme cold in January. It is thick and widespread. Column test didn't release here, but placing the shovel behind the column didn't require that much extra effort to get a 3 foot slab of snow to cut loose.