Monroe Brook

Quick report

Skinned into Monroe Brook to get see how those areas on the West side of Mt. Washington are developing. I reaching a high point of 3800' before turning around due to undermined snow and open water. I measured the Height of Snow at my highpoint to be 130cm. The upper parts of the run looked better developed, but down low the conditions were still very scrappy. I did not observe any signs of instability, and an ECT done at my high point produced no results (ECTX). But there were signs of previous wind loading from the early parts of the recent storm, but now the winds have shifted to the NW and I observed some scouring of the snow surface. My low highpoint kept me in pretty sheltered terrain, so I still have a lot of uncertainty of what the upper elevations of Monroe Brook hold. I observed Moderate, NW winds at the elevations I traveled in, with signs of higher winds at the upper elevations. It was snowing consistently (S-1) all morning, but there was little accumulation. I dug a snowpit just below my highpoint. The only thing of note was a thin layer of graupel at the bottom of the new snow, at the old/new interface. This layer produced clean shears during shovel shear tests, but I got no results from an ECT during my snowpack tests. I think this is because the new snow was still fairly uncohesive. But if the overlying snow stiffens up before the graupel has a chance to bond, I would expect it to become more reactive.