Wild Kingdom

We chased good visibility again today intending to dig a full profile to summarize the snowpack in the Haines area. We had cloudy skies, strong southerly winds, and continued periods of snow throughout the day. Storm totals are around 20 cm at the Summit. The new snow is building deep drifts of wind-deposited snow on lee and cross-loaded slopes, and we were avoiding any steep, convex features where this could produce a wind slab avalanche. Below this, we found a relatively well-consolidated snowpack overlying the weak layer from early December. This layer comprises a melt-freeze crust and facets (weak, sugary grains). We did not get any significant test results on any layers and are currently considering the weak layer to be dormant. We may be concerned about this layer in the future in the event of heavy loading from snow and wind, or a temperature spike. The total height of snow varies at Treeline from 80 to 250 cm.