Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Following up on Erik Olson’s post with observations from our Avy 2 class. We dug a pit on a SSE facing slope at an elevation of 4520ft and at an angle of 32 degrees. We had a very shallow snowpack at our selected site, HS 35cm. We found evidence of a crust at around 15cm and a noticeable deep persistent weak layer at 5cm. The snow had a good amount of moisture content, likely from the solar effect breaking through the clouds earlier in the day. Our extended column test were ECTn21 at 22cm and ECTp23 at 5cm. Our PST delivered a slab fracture at 25/100 with a vertical fracture at 30cm. The snow was all fairly soft, 4F for the 35-25cm band and F for all of the snow below. We saw rounded facets throughout the snowpack, with 1/2mm - 1mm grain size until the PWS at 5cm where they were 3mm. Any additional stiffer snow on top of this layer definitely would be a concern.