Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- isolated
We went down to see what havoc the 70+ mph winds had wreaked the days prior. The wind was still actively transporting snow (albeit mildly) above tree line. The SE face of Devils Thumb was heavily scoured, at times down to bare rock. On average, probably 5-10cm remain. We opted to ski the gully, as the north and south winds had transported and cross-loaded snow into the gully. We dug a pit in the gully at 4,200’ and found about 80cm of finger to pencil-hard wind slab with facets beneath. In our compression test, there were several reactive layers with sudden planar shear quality in the upper 30 cm of snow between layers of wind slab. On an extended column test, no propagation was observed. Below 3,500’, the snowpack was saturated with temperatures in the mid to low 40’s.