Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Cracking, Collapsing, Rapid Warming
Started cloudy with short periods of snow around 1130, with clouds gradually lessening till mostly sunny at 1600. HS in our pit unknown as we were unable to reach the ground by probing the bottom of a 160cm snowpit with a 320cm probe. Solar aspects and low elevations were taking heat by our exit at 1600 and will be quite crunchy tomorrow. However, the skiing on higher elevation shady aspects seems like it will stay good at least through tomorrow. No wind or substantial new snowfall noted today.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>We dug a pit around 8000' on a very sheltered, shady, NE aspect. HN was a colossal 140cm. Around 40-50cm down was a weak layer that was reactive in ECTs (ECTP7 and ECTP17) on what appeared to be low-density stellar dendrites. The slab also sheared with very little force from my shovel (STE). Despite the propagation, the weak layer appeared to have very little energy, as the block did not move or make sound when it propagated- a line just appeared across the column, consistent with a high-friction weak layer. We skiied a couple short test slopes in the mid-30s with no reactivity- I'd guess this would only slide on a steeper slope, and is probably settling out quickly. We noted cracking around the skinner in a variety of places where the cracks appeared to go down to this layer, so this is likely a more widespread problem related to this density inversion in the new snow.</p>