Quick report
I ventured into the Lundy area today with the goal of evaluating basal facets below treeline in an area with a relatively shallow snowpack.
- Overall it remains fairly low tide in the Lundy area
- Average snow depth measured up to 10,000’ was between 50 and 80 cm.
- Recent snow totals were about 25 cm. with some favored areas showing closer to 35cm.
- Solar aspects in the area are pretty burned out overall but some areas of connected snow were observed.
- I observed no signs of instability on my tour today
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
All in all, it was a pleasant day with warm temps, mostly light winds, and increasing cloud cover throughout the day.
Snowpack
- I dug in at three locations today. Time constraints kept me from conducting a full profile in my third location, but conditions were very similar in all three.
- Basal facets are present throughout the terrain. 1-2mm facets dominated at lower elevations and some striated depth hoar as large as 6mm in size was observed above 8500’.
- Stability tests highlighted this layer as the main concern, but I noted this layer is largely interrupted by ground cover. This made for difficult site selection and a mixed bag of observations.
- When I was able to isolate uninterrupted columns I observed sudden collapse results on my compression tests as well as propagation in my ECT test. (CTM SC, ECTP21-22 in all three locations)
- One notable observation was that in one location at 8800’ I got propagation in my ECT test with an uninterrupted column and an ECTX on a second test with a pesky manzanita interrupting the weak layer. There is no “standard” for this particular observation, but I found it interesting.