Quick report
- Aspect
- North
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2896 m
- Slope Angle
- 35°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>This is the difficult time to judge stability because the obvious signs like cracking and collapsing are no longer present. That said, most profiles on shady / north aspects with October snow have shown more stubborn but clean shears with relatively little effort.</p>
In this location, the overall snowpack was quite thin (65cms) and the facets were not as deep as those we observed on say Murdock (30 cms vs 15 cms). That said, our pit tests were comparable to those in that area yesterday and we still observed relatively planar shear with about the same amount of effort.
The facets in the photo above seemed to be not as sugary as during periods of cold temperatures. I suppose this is one up-side to the inverted conditions.
Snowpack
Per the weather above, snow that was out of the sun was cold settled powder. On solar aspects, there was a softening crust from prior days (for example, south and east facing around 8200 feet). In other locations (for example, west facing above 9000 feet) snow was getting damp by the end of the day. Yesterday on similar aspects (eg, west > 9000 feet) snow remained soft so this was probably the greatest extent of warming since the last storm cycle in the areas we traveled.
Along ridgelines some obvious wind loaded areas have become quite firm and stubborn.