Quick report
- Aspect
- South
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2987 m
- Slope Angle
- 25°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Biggest red flag is the known poor snowpack with new load. It seems like the storm underproduced forecasted amounts a little bit, at least high up, but it's still a solid new load for the snowpack. I didn't notice any collapses traveling around, but I also stuck to almost exclusively south facing slopes.</p> <p>Wind loading was very minor, mostly just moving soft snow around.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>It's hard to tell exactly how much of a concern this is on south facing slopes. I dug a pit right at the base of Cardiff Bowl and observed the same 2 crust layers with facets underneath that others have been seeing, but I couldn't get anything to move in an ECT, and even when I pulled it out with my shovel after the taps it didn't come out altogether as a cohesive slab. That being said - low angle slopes on Cardiff Bowl which gets almost as much skier compaction as inbounds runs probably aren't the best proxy for conditions elsewhere in the range. I didn't get onto anything other than South slopes, and I was racing daylight, so I'm not sure how the new load affected things on other aspects.</p> <p>We'll have to see how the snow tonight affects things.</p> <p>Normal storm skiing loose sloughs possible with the new powder.</p>
Beautiful right side up now new snow. The wind had been playing with the new snow a little bit - I was seeing everything from ~20 cms to 35 - 45+ cms in places. I didn't see any hard wind slabs forming even where snow was being deposited though, and I couldn't get anything to crack or move with ski cuts - there just wasn't all that much transport going on.
Skiing was excellent powder - easily my best turns of the year so far, even if you still do have to be careful for buried rocks and stumps.