Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Quick summary of conditions and findings from The Patrol Fund Avalanche Level II course today/ this weekend. • Elevated Danger kept our travel confined to slopes less than 30º today. We gave ourselves wide margins and chose to ski into the S/SE slopes of the Retirement Bowl. • Our groups objective was to dig a snowpit at middle elevations, and conduct a few stability test to see how the snowpack is responding to the incoming AR. • We elected to target a south facing slope at ~6100' -Results- Down 12cm (new snow interface): ECTP5, PST 22/100 (Arr) Down 55cm (Jan31 PWL): ECTX, ECTP31+ (gave a few extra hard whacks after the X result, triggering a fast clean propagation) ECTN25. PST 36/100 (END). • We've been in the field past three days taking peeks at the Jan31 PWL, its distribution, character, and sensitivity. Results have been mixed. • The Jan31 interface has varying character across the landscape, but in all cases presents as some form of weak faceted snow or buried surface hoar. • Our group only observed ECT propagation and PST unstable results on the sunny half of the compass, however some of the other groups within the course were able to produce ECTP results on shaded slopes too. • In the past three days, all propagating results recorded on the Jan31 interface were consistently failing on hard force. Alluding to its stubborn nature. At least our tests would suggest that. • Would expect this layer to have been more reactive today in areas that received higher snow totals. As of 2pm, East WMR had accumulated ~4+ inches of very dense new snow above 6000' • The new snow interface was exhibiting clean and fast propagation with light force. This layer is notably wetter and denser than the old snow surface. Fortunately it was only 4 inches thick today where we traveled. • We got a brief window of moderatly good visibility into the steep skook chutes. No recent avalanches yet as far as we could tell. Large Tree Bombs initiated halo cracks within the warm storm snow. 4 inches deep.