Observation: 10420

Quick report

Red Flags

Poor Snowpack Structure

Red Flags Comment

First tour of this season. being a clear windless night, and a thin, early season snow pack, I was hunting for surface and depth hoar. to summarize ditto Mark White from yesterdays nipple. surface hoar... found none, but was looking in wrong spots (not in valleys) suspect it is out there.may get destroyed anyway. depth hoar...I dug multiple quick hand pits to the ground with my hands which took 1 minute tops. Snow depth is 2' to 3' around 10420. found no facets except 1 spot which was due north, about 10,200, shaded, and i suspect it was from the old snow, facets were small and not very deep (3 cm) everywhere else on my tour no depth hoar. of interest on a sw facing slope, by picnic tree dropping into hidden valley 10,000 i found a older wind slab, below the wind slab is a weak layer. there is 5 cm of fluff, bout 15 cm of slab where i was then 7 cm weak layer so weak layer is 20 cm down (lemon 1). weak layer is about 7 cm thick.(lemon 2). is a very very weak layer with a 2 to 3 step down in hardness from wind slab (lemon 3). to summarize the snow structure in the area I toured is good except where it is not ( wind slabs). I am not sure what day the wind slab was formed, or the story of the weak layer below it. mark whites observation from dec 7 nipple was helpful and spot on.

First tour of year. flew in last night, no wind, scraped frost off my windshield. was looking for surface hoar and depth hoar.

Surface hoar... I found none, but was looking in wrong place. I was up pretty high, not in valleys

debpth hoar. Found 1 spot at 10,200 due n facing with some faceting. Dug multiple hand pits, it is still a very shallow pack, 2 feet deep.

Band is not streched currently but from my tour I too believe this will be our weak layer with the storm. Once we are loaded, It will be very difficult to figure out where this weak layer is.

Questions, storm is coming in wet and inverted, noticed some surface faceting today, will new snow bond well to old? how will our 3 foot thin snow pack deal with 3 feet of snow (lot of water weight) where is the depth whore?

or does none of this matter, on this thin snowpack. Will there be so much weight that everything is suspect? tommorow not a lot of weight but as, as weight is added...