Quick report
Overall for today layers were heavy, stubborn, and predominantly well bonded. We weren't concerned about avalanches where we traveled. We weren't on south-facing terrain. Riding was good but snow felt heavier as the day progressed. Mild greenhousing happened with variable low clouds.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 3800
- Recent Snowfall
- 12
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Typical spring weather: Blue patches, then obscured with occassional low clouds. A lunchtime graupel squall, not amounting to much, and a moderate snowfall amount of fat snowflakes falling as we departed the area at 3pm. Calm.
Snowpack
New snow layer of ~4" coated from about 4000ft up. This layer was minimally wind-affected, and I saw no wind slabs. Snow was heavy up to our maximum elevation of 5500'. Since we predominantly traveled on north-facing terrain, there was more heavy snow beneath the newer layer, but it wasn't crusty. Boot penetration was about 20cm.
At 5000ft the Early Feb Crust was 1ft deep. The snow down to the crust was moist. At 5500ft, we were close to the ridgeline so older snow was wind-effected. Snow depths above the crust averaged about 40cm. Although I couldn't tell due to the new snow layer being non wind-affected, nearby snow was only about 15cm coating the crust. This snow was heavy but mainly dry. In all areas at 5500' I found a thin layer of rounding facets, 4 finger hardness, above the crust. I couldn't get the layer to propagate in extended column tests although it had sudden planar failures with compression tests.
Avalanche
A few tiny rollerballs came down on east and west aspects, but I saw no new avalanches from today. We saw old, large wet slab avalanches, now coated with about a foot of snow, from the late January atmospheric river at 5500' in north-facing terrain (media gallery).