Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>The snowpack structure where we travel was poor today. We witness many (4-6) small sluffs that came off north facing cliff bands all day. By mid-day we had a fair amount of spindrift on our route from downsloping winds that had increased. </p>
With the incoming storm I would take note on which terrain features held snow prior to this storm and which slopes where dry. The terrain feature we climbed today, I would NOT recommend climbing this with any additional snow as it is subject to high avalanche danger.
Below is a picture of the East Face of Roberts Horn. The snowy benches had 2-3ft of total snow pack.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>With forecasted new snowfall and increased winds.</p>
Snowpack in lower Primrose Cirque varied greatly. Above the brush line (8K) generally the snow surface had a 1-2" 1F wind crust on top of ~2ft of loose faceted snow grains. The wind crust generally was not supportable enough to walk on top and we would punch into the faceted snow.