Fortune Creek (Salmon La Sac)

It was great to see quite a bit of fun and soft new snow in the Salmon La Sac! The new and recent snow is very soft and lacks cohesion. This made for managing a dry loose problem as we traveled around. We did not observe any signs of wind loading as the wind was nearly negligible, although the ridge we traveled to was fairly protected by trees. Within the snowpack, there are plenty of suspicious weak layers that we are all keeping a close eye on, but at the moment, the slab above lacks the characteristics to make these buried weak layers problematic.

It was relatively easy to trigger dry loose sluffing in very steep terrain. We observed very small and isolated cracking in storm snow, but this was only in occasional unsupported spots. We observed no signs of new/current wind loading.

Lower elevations: There was about 5cm (2in) of new snow at the trailhead that was mostly melted by the afternoon. As we traveled up, by 4600 ft, we found 9cm (4in) of new/recent snow. In total, there was 18cm (7in) overlaying the 02/07 crust which is very hard and supportable at these elevations.

Middle elevations: Snow totals continued to quickly increase as we gained elevation. We found 12cm (5in) of new/recent snow at 5000 ft. In total, this made 25cm of snow over the 02/07 crust, which was still very hard at 5000 ft. By 6000 ft, it had softened a bit, but not much. It made for difficult skinning across steep slopes as it is quite slick. I was able to find buried surface hoar in quick hand pits at these elevations. We traveled up east and southeast aspects.

Upper elevations: We topped out around 6200 ft, and here we found 28cm (11in) of new/recent snow. In total, there was 37cm (15in) of snow over the 02/07 crust. I dug a pit on an east aspect at 6177 ft. The depth of this pit was 235cm (93in). This location has likely seeen some previous wind loading as the pit location was just below ridgeline. As mentioned there was close to a foot of new/recent snow. We found an extremely thin and friable sun crust below this. Moving down, we found a layer made up of decomposing fragments that were faceting. This layer overlayed an inconsistent layer of buried surface hoar. Next came another layer of near crust facets over a 10cm (4in) thick crust formed on 02/07. This crust was supportable to skis, but not boots. We found more faceted snow below the crust. The rest of the snowpack was largely hard, supportable snow. Small column tests showed results at the sun crust, the buried surface hoar, and within the facets below the 02/07 (CT12SC down 22cm, CT20BRK down 28cm, CT23SC down 59cm). Large column tests showed results at the same interfaces, which includes a propogation saw test performed on the faceted snow below the 02/07 (ECTN12 down 22cm, ECTN16 down 28cm, PST62/100End down 59cm).