Quick report
- Aspect
- Northeast
- Red Flags
- Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2957 m
- Slope Angle
- 31°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Occasional, localized cracking.</p>
Back at the Mill, morning weather treated recreators to a spectacular show of dazzling stellars, rimed trees (pictured), and around 6" of new snow. Wind drifts from previous NW winds were present in exposed terrain (attached is photo of a 3' drift lee to a tree, with McCartney for scale.) A uniform layer of large, intact, buried surface hoar (pictured) was found on E through N terrain in an open, upper elevation area near the wind zone. Handpits on upper elevation E through N were failing on this surface hoar layer with regularity. A snowpit dug in an area harboring weak snow reveals a setup for astoundingly poor structure. Two ECTs performed in the snowpit may speak very different results, but the quantity of weak snow, in this hole, lent itself to either a quick failure, or a total disintegration. This discrepancy in result has been present over the last month in other areas containing especially weak snow.
Snowpack
New snow contains rimed particles lower, with intact stellars on the surface.