Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- isolated
There was a short window when clouds pulled back a little before sunset. I was able to get a pretty good view on the large avalanche terrain in the immediate vicinity and I did not see any evidence of avalanche activity. I did see a lot of avalanche starting zones and tracks that had large amounts of new snow deposited in them. Tons of snow available for transport, particularly at low and middle elevations. Upper elevation snow fell with a bunch of syndepositional wind. Lots of hard slabs and cross-loaded features on windward slopes and softer slabs on leeward slopes. Many upper elevation surfaces were cleaned back to the old icy snow surface. These storms are transformational for the snowpack and landscape! Looking forward to seeing the new coat on the mountains. Lots of active riming going on, I accumulated 6-7mm+ on my person on the ascent (jackets, poles, backpack, face, etc). I experienced a few large collapses involving entire untouched meadows down in the flats (likely good 12/13 SH preservation here). I experienced a few much smaller collapses as I ascended through large amounts of middle elevation terrain, these did not seem to travel more than 20-40 feet. I (safely) stomped and pushed on and kicked at and prodded and tickled many starting zones holding large quantities of wind drifted snow on several different aspects without any results.
Snowpack
First few days of the storm brought amazing skiing. Snow was noticeably heavier today, but skiing was still quite good.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- SE
- Trigger
- AS
- Elevation
- 8200 ft
I observed several small slabs on steep highway roadcuts. Many of the larger road cuts that frequently avalanche had not slid.