Quick report
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>None. No significant wind loading witnessed on our tour (though winds shifted and picked up late in the day) and saw no avalanches.</p>
Photo of a chunk of the wind crust resting on the wind affected snow around 7300ft.
Dug a pit around 7900ft on the NNW aspect of dead tree knob. Found the facets comprising as much as the bottom 10cm of the snowpack, with enough moisture to bond when squeezed in hand, and individual grains rounding and aggregating. Right side up snow ranging from P to F hardness above this, 1.5m snow height in this location. ECTs were unreactive.
Snowpack
Mixed bag of surface conditions today. Preserved powder in sheltered locations. Wide spread surface hoar across the map. Pretty large grain size in the low elevation inversion, that persisted even on slopes in direct sun much of the day. As high as 7800ft, even found the sparkle of fine grained surface hoar on top of previously wind affected snow.
In exposed locations at mid elevations, scalloped and rippled snow surfaces indicated wind effects. This wind crust varied from supportable to breakable at seemingly exactly the wrong moments for making good turns.
Especially on sunny slopes, snow under the surface hoar was dense loose, but even early in the day we did not find significant crust yet.