Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
A pleasant day for backcountry travel. We found few signs of unstable snow at mid and upper elevations. Small pockets of wind slabs above tree line were mostly unreactive to ski cuts. Surface hoar was found buried 15-20cm below the snow surface on southerly aspects, but did not fail during instability tests around 7000'. Easterly aspects did not have any buried surface hoar layer around 6200'. Slopes were supportive on various aspects and elevations making travel much more pleasant than it was last week in the same area.
Generally stable conditions on Southerly aspects. We did find small pockets of buried surface hoar on SE-SW aspects in areas around trees where winds couldn't knock down the SH. (see photo below)Weather
- Air Temp
- 20
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 1000'
- Recent Snowfall
- 6
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
clear and cold this morning with gradual warming till mid afternoon. light/moderate winds were out of the north. clouds gradually increased to scattered by 1600.
Snowpack
Southerly aspects: 20-45 cm of new snow fell on top of a facet/crust layer buried around 35 cm. Below that we found 15 cm of 4F snow resting on top of faceted crystals. These facets sat on top of a stout knife hard 15cm crust from 2/3.
Eastern aspects: 40-50 cm of new snow sat on top of a faceted layer. These facets are on top of the 2/3 stout melt/freeze crust.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1 R1
- Type
- L
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- SE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 6800 ft
A few small avalanches on isolated slopes that had convex features. We did not trigger any avalanches on the 30 degree terrain we were traveling on throughout the day.