Quick report
The goal of this short field mission was to characterize the snowpack and snow surfaces in areas that could impact the valley floor (Della, Carbonate, Patterson, etc) in the coming days/weeks. Stability was excellent today - no chance of triggering an avalanche in this area. The snowpack on shadier aspects was composed of weak facets, depth hoar, surface hoar, and crusts. As storms create a slab above all the weak snow (now, they are buried weak layers), there's a good chance things will get sketchy at some point.
Weather
- Air Temp
- Mid-20s
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 1
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
OVC skies became obscured by noon and light snow began falling (S-1 to S1). There was about 1 cm on the car by 1 PM.
Snowpack
HS=40-65cm. Ski pen: Staying on or just below the surface while moving at a decent speed accross slopes, 10-25cm while skinning. Boot pen: Effectively to ground.
N-NE: Interesting layering in the upper 10cm. 1-2mm temp crust capped 1-2cm intact SH buried upright. The SH layer appeared to have a little frozen melt water in it, making it unusually strong and welding it to the 1/3 rain crust beneath it. The rain crust was still P hard, 1-4cm thick depending on location, with beautiful chained FC below it. The crust +SH+thin capping crust made these layers resemble structural building blocks - really odd. The rest of the snowpack was F and 4F FC and DH in most places with the windiest spots holding a 10cm layer of 1F snow in the middle.
NW and E: The SH was still >1cm in most places but not as tall as on the true shaded slopes. It had more free water in it, and there were places where there were 2 or 3 very thin crusts (1-2mm thick) below the SH but above the 1/3 rain crust. The thin crusts had SH shards or FC in between them, creating another interesting laminated structure. The 1/3 rain crust was also 1-4cm thick here, and a little harder in places. There were some faint crusts in the midpack, and a lot of FC and DH.
The SH at/near the surface was unusual in how strong it was. There's a lot of uncertainty regarding how much, and what kind, of a load it will take to make it fail. The FC and DH under the 1/3 crust are ugly; the degrading rain crust may "protect" the FC/DH for a while, but trusting the weak snow once a slab exists above will likely be akin to walking on thin ice.
I did not see a single round snow grain today.
Sunnier aspects were dirt or very thin snow cover.