Stevens Pass

As we entered day 2 of the warm atmospheric river event, I went out to check on the extent of recent avalanche activity and to assess how the water was moving through the snowpack. Unsurprisingly, I found widespread wet avalanche activity of all sizes from yesterday and today. Many avalanches were small, but a few very large slides came out of the upper elevations. These larger avalanches originated in the upper elevation band and flowed to lower elevations through gullies in the terrain. Visibility to the higher peaks was limited, so I couldn't determine if these were wet loose slides or wet slabs. I avoided avalanche terrain, and while I didn't find good undisturbed test slopes, the snow was easy to push, and I suspect it would be easy to trigger wet loose avalanches at mid and lower elevations in steep terrain. 

Snow Surface Summary: Snow surfaces were saturated and heavy from the recent rain and warm temperatures. In undisturbed snow, ski penetration was 15-20cm, with a boot pen the full length of my leg. 

Snowpack Summary: The upper 25cm of the snowpack was F-hardness and wet, with water pooling at the 25cm interface. Below that, the snowpack was moist and increased in hardness from 4F to 1F above two separate thin P-hard melt-freeze crusts buried 80cm. Below these crusts is P-hard snow down to the late February Atmospheric River Crust buried approximately 130cm. Drain channels are established and water is pooling at multiple interfaces in the mid and upper-snowpack. Small column stability tests produced resistant planar results below the wet surface snow at 30cm depth. 

Total Snow Height: 360cm

Stability Test Results: CT17 RP ↓ 25 &30cm, CT18 RP ↓ 30cm