White River Canyon

Monday felt warm in the White River! The upper snowpack felt quite sloppy and unsupportable along steep, sun-exposed slopes. Boot penetrations easily exceeded boot-top on steep southerly aspetcs and rollerballs would often shed with ski cuts.  The surface skied very spring-like, but the underlying snowpack remains mostly dry and far from it. These southerly aspects should have a crust moving forward. 

Instability was mainly confined to steep solar aspects due to warming. We observed a couple of fresh wet loose in the lower White River that likely released yesterday, March 1st.

We found water percolating roughly 25 cm deep in a pit on a SE aspect at 6000 ft. Below this, the snowpack was dry, well settled, and strong down to the 2/7 crust. Snowpack tests produced unremarkable test results.

There was plenty of older slab avalanche activity from our natural cycle on the 24th. Some of these avalanches broke several feet deep and propagated widely.