Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Gusty winds along the ridge lines and lots of wind transported snow throughout the afternoon onto north and east facing slopes. Easy cracking within the new snow where the winds have created some wind slabs, no collapsing noted.</p>
1. There was great powder riding out of the wind and about 12 to 16" of new light desity snow made for some easy and safe riding down in the trees. 2. The visibility was not great today, but stay in the trees and it helped with a little contrast of flat light. 3. Up on the ridge lines, it was a different story with cold and quite gusty south and southwest winds.
There were many different density layers with this recent storm, I stomped down, uphill of this snow pit and got a few different layers to shear.
In the wind zone today, shallow, but sensitive wind slabs were breaking out ahead of skis and sleds.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Quite sensitive wind slabs in the higher windy terrain up to a foot deep. Shooting cracks out ahead of sleds and skis were a great indicator of sensitive wind slabs sitting on weaker snow underneath.</p> <p>There were some easy somewhat clean shears within the new snow, but I did not get any cracks to propagate across a column in snow pits and this was in wind sheltered terrain. The new light density snow was not quite enough of a load on some of the buried weak layers. Steep windy areas might be on the edge of more unstable snow. </p>
Nice storm on the north slope, about 10" at the trailhead with upwards of 14 to 16" in Whitney Basin. Great riding and turning in wind sheltered areas.