Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Today's gusty winds from a westerly direction was the bigger red flag. There was plenty of loose surface snow to blow around creating some fresh wind slabs. These were not too much of a problem early this afternoon, but with winds forecasted to ramp up this evening these wind slabs could be a little deeper and more sensitive tomorrow. </p>
1. Not much going on today, other than the winds becoming gusty and increasing the hazard along the exposed ridgelines. I did notice some of these aprons around the higher terrain have started to fill-in. A nice natural avalanche cycle occurred back when we received a nice shot of snow in December and looks like recent wind slabs avalanched naturally as there was fresh debris on the snow surface. 2. The winds have continued to work over the higher terrain, stripping the windward slopes and depositng onto the lee ward side.
In my snow pit the slab did not have the snap or energy, but a fracture or crack still propagated across the column indicating the potential for an avalanche to be triggered. The photo does not show real well the fracture that propagated across the column in the very weak sugary snow near the ground.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The gusty winds today were movng snow around creating fresh wind slabs mainly on north through east aspects. As the afternoon went on the winds were getting into some of the lower terrain and cross loading slopes lower down. </p> <p>Not to sure if the small storm arriving this evening will do much to reactivate the buried weak snow that has been with us all winter. But the winds will surely overload some slopes creating a localized hazard in the wind zone. </p>
Still a mixed bag of snow conditions, there is some decent supportable riding and turning in isolated areas, but I continued to find bottomless weak sugery snow as I traveled around.