Quick report
We found a generally stable snowpack today and cold snow on due north. With any eastern tilt, near-surface crusts became more pronounced. Many slopes near ridgelines have been stiffened by the wind, and we found pockets of wind slabs on the margins a few hundred feet below ridgetops. Any wet snow problems were subtle today, and by this afternoon slopes were trending towards wet, but not enough for widespread wet snow problems.
Roller balls in steep easterly aspects in craggy terrain. Isolated cracking in old wind slabs near the top of ridgetops or in alpine N and NE facing slopes.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Mostly sunny skies, with some clouds passing over late in the afternoon. Light winds blew from the N and NW this morning, becoming calm in the afternoon.
Snowpack
On due N, surface snow remains unaffected by recent warm-ups. In wind-sheltered terrain, surface snow is facetting. With any eastern tilt, surfaces held a thin zipper crust at the surface and another thin crust 5cm below. Where the wind has drifted snow, we found thin (~10cm) unreactive pockety slabs. We dug on an N-facing slope at 9400', and while we did find small facets about 55cm down, these facets were unreactive in snowpack tests.
On the sunnier side of the compass, surface snow had not wetted by about 3 PM but was trending in that direction. Any surface water will have several crusts to work through in the upper snowpack, poking deeper into the snowpack, we found perc columns as deep as 100cm.
Avalanche
We saw a handful of recent wet loose slides that likely happened yesterday. In Grand Prize Canyon, we saw only a few very small avalanches in steep solar terrain that happened late this afternoon.