Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
No signs of instability on test slopes outside of cracking of 2-6" thick, firm wind slabs. These largely sat over loose, unconsolidated, faceted snow. I did not see any recent natural avalanche activity outside of mid-event debris (and forecaster-triggered test slopes) on Marmot. Members of the public reported some more small (D1) natural wind slabs around Hatcher Pass road on multiple aspects.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 18
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Easterly winds peaked at 75mph on top of Hatch yesterday morning at 0500. By mid-morning they were gusting in the 30s, starting to taper and clock around to the S then the W. Warmer, inverted temps today with Hatch weather station reading 25 by 0900. Skies were mostly clear with fog visible at valley bottom. Winds were generally calm with light breeze out of the S in the back of the valley.
Snowpack
If the beginning of the wind event marked some welcomed, gentle wind transport into rideable gully features, the peak of it blew most of our hopes away. Glassing leeward slopes, most got hammered pretty good (see photos below). Some narrow ribbons of supportive, rideable terrain still exist, but challenging travel at mid-elevations (breakable crusts, wallowy facets, or simply no snow) made for sloggy approaches off the road.
Surface conditions were variable, as mentioned above. At 4,000' on a mostly west-facing, leeward slope, I was able to find a band of what looked like decent, drifted snow. This area had a height of snow of 60cm with 2-8" of 4F hard crumbling wind slab over loose, large facets. The bottom of the snowpack here was about 10cm of chained depth hoar (see photo). Test results found no propagation and ECTN22 28cm down, where old faceted wind slab crumbled into looser, F- facets below. The good skiing here was short-lived and quickly turned breakable and grabby before firm and scoured to access the upper road.