Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Rapid Warming, Poor Snowpack Structure
Photo of upper Maybird. Red arrows showing wind direction.
Photo: Evelyn Lees 3/30/14. Great representation of shady mid elevation terrain. Exact mapping of a weak layer would be difficult as this crust, NSF, graupel sandwich varies greatly over a variety of terrain and elevation. Again, I agree with Evelyn that the snow pack has become more layered and the slab seems to be building.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The alpine terrain was mostly wind jacked and you could see the wind ripples (sastrugi) running straight up the north facing terrain. The north west winds created complex slabs throughout the alpine terrain and stripped the most exposed ridges to dirt.</p> <p>Once down in Hogum we put an uptrack back up towards the Maybird ridge for another lap. This was tricky route finding through some very steep terrain. We kept our skin track tight on a ridge spur in some trees to avoid being under too much snow above. In the trees I found very alarming snow as you could punch your pole through a four finger slab down into very weak (fist) faceted snow at the ground, this was mid elevation NW facing trees - 9700ft. I found it scary enough to change the skin track to avoid walking on the poor structure. I think we were lacking the snow (water weight) and or slab for avalanches today. We did not experience any collapsing or cracking. Height of snow in Hogum was 60-150 cm range, both my dad and I commented on the shallow nature of the drainage. </p>
We covered a variety of aspects and elevation today in our travels. I completely agree with Evelyn's observation from 10420 - on 3/30/14. The snowpack is highly variable across the terrain. This makes the snowpack tricky for future loading events. Most sunny aspects had about 5-12 inches of snow with a firm crust underneath. However, once tilted just slightly more north (shady) under the new snow the crust was thin enough to punch through into a layer cake of crusts.