Quick report
With a couple of possible weather events this coming week, wanted to get a sense of the snow surface. Two tours this weekend:
- 1/5/2013: Mid and upper Mineral Fork.
- 1/6/2013: Upper LCC/BCC.
I remain underwhelmed with the snowpack in Mineral. It is still generally thin, only exceeding a meter (~3') in the upper elevations. Pole plants still are easily identifying the facet/crust sandwiches buried 60-90 cms down in the snowpack. Lack of a slab with any energy is keeping dormant weak layers at bay in thinner snowpack areas. Was finding surface hoar down low in drainage bottoms.
Snowpack looks much better in the upper LCC and BCC drainages. Was interested in the snow surface as well as snow depths. Generally 1- 1.5 meters deep, although thinner in steep, rocky areas. Weak facets (.5 - 1 mm) in the top 10-30 cms of snow are prevalent in wind and sun sheltered areas. Beneath that the slab goes from 4F down to a stout 1F slab. Was not finding any surface hoar today, and the strong sun seems to have destroyed any faceted crystals from radiation recrystallization that I was finding on southerly aspects earlier this week.
Snowpack
Quite variable to say the least. Fresh wind slabs from SW winds produced thin wind slabs that were not sensitive to ski cuts. Was finding widespread wind damage on East through North aspects in upper elevation (>10,000') terrain. Despite the persistent winds, was not seeing much drifting during the day, probably due to lack of available snow on SW aspects. SW-SE aspects all have a breakable sun crust. In wind-sheltered areas I was finding 10-30 cms (4"-12") of faceted snow that would sluff very easily in steeper terrain (see Mark White's excellent video of this.) Weak surface snow is clearly our present concern once we put a slab on top of it. In areas with faceted snow, was getting 10 cms boot pens and 30 cm ski pens.