Mt Tallac

Great skiing out there. Had fresh powder 6-12” 2000 feet on north bowl (north of NE bowl) Started at 6:00am from the parking lot. Below ~7,500’, found ~0.5–1” sun crust on N/NE aspects over yesterday’s snow, with only ~2–4” of new snow. Coverage was thin and supportable. Crossing the ridge from S-facing to NE-facing terrain around ~8,000’, snow depth increased significantly, ranging from ~6–12” of new snow. Did not observe widespread slab formation. Noted an old, thin rain crust beneath the new snow, sitting over older facets up to ~8,500’. We didn’t see much wind slab until traversing into the NE bowl. During that traverse, observed some isolated ~4” wind slabs cracking and heard a few localized whumpfs. These seemed confined to specific pockets and we could not reproduce this behavior elsewhere during the tour. Dug a pit just below the ridge on a NE aspect in the NE bowl at ~9,350’. Observed a CT1 failure in very weak, unconsolidated new snow. The slab was soft and low density but did fail with minimal force. ECT showed no failure or propagation; snow lacked cohesion and did not behave slabby in the column. We were only able to pull out larger chunks of new snow with aggressive isolation and pulling. Density profile showed ~4–6” of 4F new snow over ~1” pencil-hard crust, with 1F snow below. Overall structure was right-side-up, but with a persistent crust/facet interface lower in the pack.

Quick report