Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
There was a lot of fog and flat light. At 7 AM, there was about 4" of wet new snow at the Marble Mtn snowpark (2600'). By 4300' (the treeline), the soft new snow was 15-25" deep on top of 2-3' of old snow. At 4700' on the ridge climbing route, there was a thin (3-6 mm) ice crust on top of the new snow. In places if was buried under several inches of wind-transported snow. At 5000', there was a short 35 degree slope (south aspect). As I headed up that slope, the wind-transported layer (4-6" thick here), was very weakly bonded to the ice layer and pieces 12-18" in diameter came loose along my snowshoe tracks and slid down the slope. I turned around. Nobody climbed higher today. During a brief window in the fog and clouds while I was at 5000', I was able to get a good look at the mountain and didn't see any evidence of recent avalanches. The fog returned. Later there was another window and I looked back up the mountain from 3800'. I could see two avalanches at about 6,000'. Both were on very steep SW slopes. Best guess from the appearence was that the sun window warmed some snow loaded rocks that dumped their loads onto that steep slope. I was too far away to tell much more about the size of the avalanches. Weather: Fog, clouds, and some light snow below 4600", but the upper reaches of the mountain were above the clouds much of the time today.
Avalanche
Visibility was poor. Two loose wet avalanches occurred at about 5500' in late morning when a brief sunny spell warmed snow loaded rocks on SW aspects of very steep slopes slopes on the canyon wall just east of the climbing route.