Quick report
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>None. </p>
Photo showing the typical setup seen, solid right-side up snowpack with weak faceting below a wind skin.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>No avalanche problems noted, the snowpack in areas traveled is consolidated with no prominent buried weak layers. All the wind slabs littered about feel dead and lack any energy...whole snowpack feels that way...tired. Only thing of interest is the surface. The snow in Snake Creek was actually denser than I expected. Although the surface is faceting, it is not overly weak, with no sluffing even on steep slopes. The most common setup in areas with near surface facets was near surface facets beneath a thin wind skin. The wind skin is in the process of faceting out, but may not get there before the next storm. Facets below any sort of a thin crust likely won't get destroyed as easily by sun or wind as stuff on the surface, but not sure if we will get a large enough load any time soon for it to matter.</p>
Broad mix of snow conditions, wind effected snow perhaps the most common. Suncrusts on southerly facing slopes were still not supportable on most S facing slopes we crossed. Solar warming around noon when the sun was out was softening the S facing slopes, but clouds moved back in shortly after and put a lid on the warming. There is actually a fair amount of soft snow around, but its hard to find a run that has any consistency, couple soft turns, couple wind jacked...repeat. But as a wise man once said, just being in the mountains is the real prize.