Quick report
No cracking or collapsing observed
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Rain Elevation
- All precip fell as snow in areas traveled
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
While ambient temperatures remained on the cooler side, solar input made for some cooking on solar aspects. Snow/frost was still visible on many trees on the N side of the road, at middle elevations near Boundary Creek, yet most trees were melted out up in the Sawtooths. A small amount of graupel ~1cm fell early in the AM prior to our start, which quickly melted into surfaces. Skies were mostly blue throughout the day with very thin, FEW high clouds clearing into the afternoon. Winds were near calm the entire day in terrain we traveled, with light intermittent variable periods of wind.
Snowpack
Surfaces were locked up and firm when leaving the trucks close to 8am. Through middle elevation terrain, the major sun/rain crust (first a sun MFcr then rained on up to ~9000') beneath recent snow ranged from 7-12cm thick and was grippy and aerated. New snow amounts above it varied between 10-15cm in none wind-effected locations. The solar input throughout the day continued to bake on this new snow. There were a number of natural, smaller loose wet avalanches and some large slides. While the snowpack didn't quite get to a widespread large natural wet cycle in the afternoon, I suspect we did get to that point for human-triggering wet avalanches on slopes that face the sun. With a lack of cloud cover throughout the day, long wave radiation continued to escape the snowpack back towards the atmosphere and cook on the new, drier snow to the crust below. With clouds forecasted to stay on the clearer end into the evening, I'd imagine a solid refreeze overnight and contintually decreased reactivity of the new snow / MFcr interface in the upper snowpack. While tomorrow will present another opportunity for wet avalanches to become an issue, it will take quite a bit of solar input & time in the morning to get there. Small pockets of the newest generations of wind slabs at the upper end of middle to lower end of upper elevations were between stubborn and reactive to our body weight, but did not propogate much farther out from the base of our skis.
Avalanche
Observed many (15-20) small wet loose avalanches. Mostly D1-D1.5 in size but 4 D2s on solar aspects around the Sawtooths, visible from high vantages in the afternoon. Also observed an older D2 in NE-facing terrain. Will update occurences as time allows.