Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
We were a little early to the celebration but it's clear, this is the reset we've been waiting for. As of this afternoon we're up to over a foot of new snow and 2 inches of SWE in the last week! That's a sweet string of storms. Finishing with some southwest flow and cooling trend? Chef's Kiss. The little bit of skiing we got today communicated two things very quickly, we're in for some much improved riding conditions, and there will be avalanches. New storm snow, wind slabs formed by historic gusts, and an overloaded weak snowpack are all things we'll be contending with in the search for smooth skiing tomorrow and the week ahead. My approach during these times is to take it easy and watch how it goes for all the other folks jumping in first, so with that, if you're going out tomorrow, don't let me learn from your mistake.
Due to the visibility, we were unable to observe natural avalanches. We did however see numerous red flags including shooting cracks, whumphing and were able to trigger a small (30' wide x 15') wind slab on a test slope.Weather
- Air Temp
- 28
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- 1400
- Recent Snowfall
- 9-11"
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Winds were blowing moderate gusting strong out of the SSE. We observed active drifting toward leeward terrain and crossloading occuring on east facing features. Wind gusts were strong enough to blow Andy's glasses off of his face (thanks Tim for the retrieval mission). The observed rain line was 1,300' on Fishhook Road as we descended driving. It snowed intermittently throughout the day. At 930, we saw S-1 graupel. By 1130, it was properly snowing (S1) slightly rimed stellars.
Snowpack
The structure remains poor. It was not hard to find a crossloaded east facing slope on the Powder Pimple that demonstrated the characteristics we have been tracking: new wind slabs failing over old, harder wind slabs and facets or breaking deeper down and interacting with the large, basal facets above the ground. See photos and video below.