Quick report
- Red Flags
- Rapid Warming
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Very warm today, especially on solar aspects. No rollerballs or wet avalanche activity noted today. Generally low danger today especially on polar aspects, with possibility of increased danger late in the day especially on solar aspects. </p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Some respectable cornices remain from the winter hanging over much of the southern, NE facing ridgeline of dry canyon. Some of the more easterly tilted cornice had some small chunks come off likely in the past couple days that had roller balled, but not triggered anything below. </p> <p>Ambient temps and solar radiation were high today and I expect that on steep and rocky terrain with full sun and still holding snow it would have been possible for a skier to trigger a small to medium size wet slide. </p>
On the way up, first signs of snow on very protected northerly aspects was around 5600'. Was able to stay on snow from about 6000'+. The snow at lower elevations had a light refreeze and anything with sun on it was thawing pretty quickly early in the morning. At mid and upper elevations surface conditions were variable and depth of snow was averaging 140-170cm at around 8000' on a North aspect in protected terrain. Generally there was a 2-4" refrozen crust (1F+) atop a couple inches of wet snow sitting on a dense bed surface. By noon, this crust was still very intact and hard (P) in open terrain on the north half of the compass. In forested areas, it seemed the overnight refreeze was much weaker with only a 1" crust (1F) and anything that was touched by the sun today was saturated to the lower crust about 6" down by late morning.