Quick report
Sunny weather, great views, and wind effect on open ridge crest slopes with potential isolated wind slabs.
Surface hoar is currently on the surface in most open sheltered areas.
Small loose dry sluffing from today's sunshine.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Clear sunny day with light westerly ridgetop winds.
Snowpack
Surface hoar is on the surface (size 6 -10mm) in many open areas at all elevations. The sun was melting the snow surface on southerly slopes, a new sun crust can be expected. We traveled up to 7600’ observing wind effect on open alpine slopes and ridge crests. Better surface quality conditions were found in sheltered areas. A west aspect snow pit at 6800’ showed a right-side up hardness profile, soft over firmer snow. We observed both resistant and sudden CT results and 3 crusts within the top 50cm(~1.5ft) ;
Surface hoar on surface, size 8mm
-CT2 RP down 17cm,
-CT7 SC down 24cm (1cm above a thin meltfreeze crust),
-CT18 RP down 30cm,
-CT14 RP down 50cm (below K hard 12/18 rain crust)
-Down 60cm is a (P hard, 0.5cm thick) crust that is decomposing
-1F to P hard snow below 60cm
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Type
- L
- Count
- 3
- Aspect
- SE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 6800 ft
We observed a couple of older avalanche crowns that likley ran right before the New Year. These slabs broke around one of the buried faceted rain crust.