Quick report
With direct March sunshine forecast tomorrow, might see loose wet activity in the new snow on solar aspects.
Lack of winds led to overall low danger on our tour today.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Went to the Monitors to see if the new snow would fail at the interface with older facets or crusts. While the several inches sluffed easily on steep slopes, it moved slowly and didn't run far. Tilt test showed easiest shear plane was within the storm snow, about an inch above the crust. In practice, loose snow ran down to the dirty underlying old snow surface. Athough there were facets below the crusts, we didn't see any stability concerns in the old snow with the relatively small amount of new snow load today. All the new snow was unconsolidated, and couldn't find anywhere with any slab-like tendencies. </p> <p> </p> <p>The crust ranged from 3cm of relativety stout melt freeze on south, to thin temperature crust on the northern aspects. In some locations the crust had refrozen completely, while it remained spongy and moist (and well bonded) in most terrain we traveled.</p>