Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
Nice day to be out skiing. • Lots of nice cold snow blanketing the mountains at the moment. Similar to what other observers are finding lately, we felt that the surface snow seems to lack the cohesion necessary to form a slab except for areas that were stiffened by today's west winds. It's hard to put a lot of trust in it though, with how widespread and hopelessly weak the facets are from late January. • Wind effect observed was on the light side, but there were moments of moderate gust and drifting snow at ridge top this afternoon. Winds felt calm below about 6500' • Enjoyed quality riding with almost no signs of instability. Started our day with a bit of whumpfing in some open flats and finished our day with a little bit of sloughing on a ~40º slope. This sloughing occurred at approximately 5000' on an east facing slope and ran a few hundred feet before terminating in lower angled terrain • To reiterate, the riding was good today, but the structure remains poor. I would recommend a status quo mindset and wide margins out there. Things might change a lot quicker than a group's itinerary can adapt. Whumpfing observed on the canyon floor in some open flats. Two of these loud settlements resulted in a remotely triggered crack on a nearby slope. one longer crack was slow to form, but gradually appeared before our eyes about 50-75 feet from where we initiated the collapse. This later proved (seemed) to be isolated to the canyon floor after our day of touring, but was certainly a tone setter for the day.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- 4
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Cloudy and Cold. Light west winds with moderate gust observed above 6500'. Light snowfall all day amounting to about an inch by 4pm. Snowfall rates were on the rise during our drive back to the valley.