Rubicon Peak

We toured the E to NE slopes of Rubicon Peak today. There was 40 inches of new snow at 8,200' with 4 inches of storm snow settlement observed around trees. We spoke to a party who reported triggering two whumpfs on NE aspect terrain around 2 pm. We did not trigger any collapses ourselves. We stopped at 8,200' and dug a testpit on a NE aspect in near treeline terrain. At this location HS was 303cm with 165 cm of snow on top of the Feb 10 layer. We tested this layer with a deep tap test which produced a sudden collapse result. The Feb 10 layer was 4F hard at this location and the base of the overlying slab was 1F+ hard. The top of the Feb 10 facet layer was decently bonded to the rain crust along the top of it. The Feb 10 layer was not as weak in this pit location as we have seen on other locations over on the north side of Rubicon Peak.

We observed some blowing and drifting snow across the E aspect micro ridge we ascended from about 8,000' on up. We observed some minor snow surface cracking while breaking trail that was occurring on graupel about 10 cm (4 inches) below the snow surface a little before 3 pm.

We spoke to a party that had triggered two whumpfs around 2 pm in NE aspect terrain. We noted some snow surface cracking while breaking trail that was occurring on graupel about 10 cm (4 inches) below the snow surface a little before 3 pm.