Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- isolated
No new avalanches were observed. Cracking was isolated to wind loaded terrain features. I felt one small collapse on a wind-loaded test slope, but I think it was isolated to the dense wind slab over some preserved softer snow (not a deeper instability).
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- 5500'
- Recent Snowfall
- 15
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Overcast Skies, Light Snow, and South winds gusting in the moderate category. Winds backed off throughout the day, and snowfall tapered by early afternoon. Temperatures were in the upper 20's.
Snowpack
There was about 6" of new snow in the location we travelled. The new snow was upside down, and if you stepped above the skin track, a 6-8" slab would easily break off below your skis. Strong overnight Southerly winds near and above treeline had blown the new snow into wind slabs that were reactive on small test slopes.
I dug a pit at 7700' on a North aspect and found a total snow height of about 200 cm/6+'. Just over a foot down from the surface, I found some buried surface hoar that was not reactive in an ECT or CT, but failed easily in shear. This surface hoar got buried on Valentine's day. The surface hoar was laying down, perhaps from wind knocking it over.
My Extended column test produced several failures with moderate force in the top 35 cm of the snowpack, but none of them propagated across the column. I conducted a compression test, with a resistant planar result (CT11RP) down 25 cm/10" and a sudden planar result (CT25SP) down 53 cm/21".
The Pencil Hard 2/1 Rain Crust was found about 2 feet down from the surface. The snowpack layers around the crust seemed to be bonding well. I dug to the ground in a corner of my pit and found the 1/4 Interface below a very dense P+ hard slab at a depth of about 5' from the surface. The old snow near the ground was rounding out nicely.