Quick report
The extreme wind event that occurred last night caused more damage to the snow surfaces. We found blown scree, wind erosion, a few hard slabs, and some northerly-facing slopes that were blown back to the rain crust. Thankfully, there were still some soft turns in the alpine if you hunted around for the right texture. A recent large avalanche was observed on the NW side of Mt Whetstone.
No signs of instability underfoot except minor cracking in thin, hard wind slabs, typically 1" to 4" thick.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Moderate winds with strong gusts in exposed areas. Cooler temps than earlier this week.
Snowpack
The extreme wind event that occurred last night caused more damage to the snow surfaces. We found blown scree, wind erosion, a few hard slabs, and some northerly-facing slopes that were blown back to the rain crust. Thankfully, there were still some soft turns in the alpine if you hunted around for the right texture.
East at 12,600ft had a thin melt-freeze crust over dry snow that skied ok. East at 12,000ft had a thick melt-freeze crust that remained frozen and supportable.
A targeted test pit in a shallower snowpack area produced Non-propagating results at the 2/11 interface (ECTN) after removing parts of the slab and delivering heavy blows.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2.5
- Type
- HS
- Aspect
- NW
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 11800 ft
Spotted a fresh-looking large persistent slab on the northwest side of Whetstone. We're not sure when it ran because there have been ongoing periods of light wind drifting in the past few days; it could have run as recently as last night during the extreme wind event.