Weather
- Air Temp
- 21
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Increasing cloud cover and light to moderate speed NE winds.
Snowpack
We started traveling on continuous snow cover across northerly aspects where we left the road near 8,600'. The snowpack across all NW-N-NE aspect terrain that we traveled was faceted and ranged from 2 to 20 inches in depth. In wind protected areas we had weak, loose grained facets on top of ice. Moisture of the faceted snow was dry in some areas and dry to moist in other areas.
In areas with previous wind exposure, we encountered a 1 to 4 inch thick wind slab on the snow surface. This slab was patchy in terms of slope scale distribution and not continuous for large areas. The snow below this slab was very weak and faceted with ice at the bottom of the snowpack in many areas. We dug our pit in an area of wind slab.
NE winds on the ridges felt lighter than expected. We saw no areas of blowing snow.