Rose Knob Peak

We toured on Rose Knob Peak this morning. Despite the mid level cloud cover, brief sun breaks allowed for incoming solar radiation to create some thin sun crust on the SE aspect terrain that we traveled. E to NE aspect terrain was remaining unaffected by solar radiation.

Winds remained out of the SW today with light amounts of blowing snow observed in near treeline terrain. Winds increased a bit during the late morning hours, enough to create a small amount of skin track refill. We kicked at and ski cut several wind loaded test slopes that held shallow, stubborn wind slabs. On a couple of these test slopes we were able to create some short cracks. On most of the test slopes, no wind slab failure occurred. This matched well with hand pit info indicating that the slabs were reasonably well bonded and had BRK fracture character. Cornices in the area were still weak and easy to collapse intentionally. Signs of below treeline wind drifting in recent days was impressive in this area with some large wind drift features noted 600+ vertical feet below treeline.

Short cracks in obvious wind loaded test slopes.