Weather
- Air Temp
- 20
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- Not observed
- Recent Snowfall
- 15
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Mostly sunny skies, no wind, no precipitation. Temperature was around 20 F when we left our car and around 40 F when we came back.
Snowpack
We found 4" of new snow at lower elevations and around 6" of new snow at higher elevations. We dug multiple snow pits, conducted pole probes, dug several hand pits, and did not find buried surface hoar. We did however find the near surface facets that were formed in a similar timeframe. We did not feel any woomphing or experience shooting cracks. The new snow appeared to have bonded well to the preexisting snow underneath. We did observe wind-affected snow around Pastoral Peak along ridgetops and at higher elevations. The snow surface was soft powder. On higher solar aspects later in the afternoon we kicked off small golf-ball-sized snowballs from our ski descent. We also had a little bit of glopping on the bases of our skis when we moved back into the shade off the sun-affected snow.
Avalanche
We saw natural avalanche debris on Seattle Ridge, The Library, and the peaks between Kickstep and Pastoral. Most of the avalanche debris was large point-release from rock bands but we did observe four district large crown slab avalanches suspected to have failed on the buried surface hoar layer. The majority of the avalanche activity was on south-facing slopes in steep terrain at higher elevations.