Quick report
Triggered a few shallow wind slabs on small test slopes (NW and NE facing), and noted a handful of natural wind slabs up to D1.5 that likely ran yesterday.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- Variable
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Snowpack
Recent storm totals are highly variable after the wind event, best guess is around 12" below Purple Peak, but highly redistributed now by the winds. Some places are blown back to old snow surfaces, and in others, there are thicker drifts up to a couple feet thick, some hard (1F+) and some softer (4F). We chose to avoid several hard slabs in bigger terrain features. On smaller test slopes, the small wind slabs that were encountered were stiff, and it was generally difficult to get a result. Sometimes, that hard slab broke within the storm snow, and others broke on the old faceted storm interface.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2.5
- Type
- SS
- Count
- 8
- Aspect
- W
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 11800 ft
Natural wind slab avalanche activity appeared to be isolated and small (D1-1.5). The largest avalanche observed was on the east face of Mt Owen. Previous wind slab activity was most commen on East to NE facing terrain. Small avalanches were visable a few other aspects too, such as NW, W, and SE.