Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>No Jan 24 avalanches noted, although there appeared to be debris and a flank from a recent-ish slide on north side of ridge near Lane's Leap. Cracking not noted in wind-protected terrain, but there was substantial cracking on sensitive soft wind slabs: 40’ long and 1 foot deep on a short but steep test slope.</p>
Wind loading just ENE ridgeline made for shooting cracks and slide-ready pockets
Un-exciting photo of under whelming ECT: non-propagating fractures in new snow. After photo, full arm swings got fracture (not clean, no propagation) below visible crust roughly 40cm down
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Wind was transporting snow, and we tickled two soft slabs on short-but-steep test slopes, one 40’ wide by 1’ deep, another 12’ wide by 1' deep. Suspect they would have run on longer slope.</p> <p>Enough new precip for storm snow and dry loose sluffs to be concerning in steep terrain. </p> <p>Today's 8 inches provided less of a load than the snowpack saw 1/19-1/21. While a persistent slab may lurk, nothing today pointed to it. After finally releasing a hard and stubborn cornice, we watched it push storm snow down a gully without fracturing into lower layers.</p>
Pits on mid elevation N and S, and on high elevation SE and SW failed to reveal instability of snowpack. Two shear planes found within the new snow on wrist and elbow taps, but no propagation and no alarming characteristics. On mid elevation south the snowpack was thinner than in the other pits (~60 cm) and while the facets were weak there was no slab to speak of. Higher elevation pits were deeper (120-160 cm), and revealed more substantial slab and some ECTN results with full arm swing in facets below the Jan 14th crust. Again, nothing alarming. Suspect south facing Gobbler snowpack thinner and weaker than what we saw near Brighton.