Quick report
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Snow appeared mostly stable in Steep Hollow, except for loose new snow sluffing in steep terrain. No red flags noted</p>
I found an interesting weak radiation crust, shallowly buried under a couple inches of light new snow on a south-southwest facing slope at around 8800' in elevation. It was quite weak, failing easily upon insolation on small sugary or small grained faceted crystals just beneath it.
There were some nice cornices on the ridge above Crescent Lake, and after making sure nobody was below I dropped a couple onto the steep north facing slopes below. In doing so, I was able to initiate some pretty good sized loose avalanches. This one packed a bit of a punch, running a few hundred vertical feet and gaining width on the steep slope.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>No problem with fresh wind slabs today, but a bit of concern regarding deep drifts and soft slabs formed by drifting low density snow under a northwest flow on Christmas Eve. Loose sluffing on steep slopes, sometimes entraining good amounts of snow and moving pretty fast.</p> <p>not windy today, but things could get interesting quickly when the winds pick up.</p>
Very nice, fairly deep. light powder conditions...