Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
Clear skies and calm winds were the theme for the day. Despite the stable weather, we found unstable results in the snowpack. After skiing a short, steep, north facing line as a warmup the plan was to ski a steeper, longer, and more consequential line on north facing terrain. An ECTP9 at 6800' on the same aspect as our intended line caused us to quickly change plans. Switching to sheltered east facing terrain led to fun powder skiing without the risk of an anomalous slab ruining the day. We observed shooting cracks and slabs breaking off on the switchbacks of our skin track on north facing terrain at 6800' and above.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
Clear skies with a few clouds and calm winds.
Snowpack
We found overall stable conditions today reflecting the green triangle in the forecast. Generally speaking we found 4-8 inches of faceting snow on top of the 12/7 raincrust. The exception to this was on an isolated north facing slope above 6800'. We first observed cracking and slabs breaking off on our switchbacks on the skintrack. This prompted us to dig a pit where an extended column test resulted in a ECTP9 25cm down at 6800' on a north aspect. It seemed to have failed on an old wind slab that was isolated to the specific slope we were on. This wind slab was fist to one finger hard and decomposing but failed on a thin layer of lower density snow. This slab felt like and would have skied like powder, an alluring trap with potentially big consequences.