Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
Spent a good amount of time poking around Silver Basin starting Tuesday, November 5th through Friday, November 15th. My observations matched my expectations from the base and summit telemetry. All cycles were clearly visible in the snowpack between 5000-6000ft on N and NW aspects. There may only be ~50cm of snow in Southback, but it's LOADED up to 120cm in select areas. Dangerous avalanche conditions may develop with colder temperatures and large gradients. Wind loading near ridgeline was obvious and manageable. Cornices were small but very reactive and grew significantly Wednesday night. See my avalanche observations from Thursday for more detail about this problem. I was regularly probing starting Thursday morning and didn't like the hollow feeling near the ground in several spots on the track up so dug down to rule out rotten snow. Two quick and dirty profiles of ~100cm of snowpack in Henskin Trees (~5400ft, N) and Super Bowl (~5800ft, NE) were generally the same: 1 finger of wet, consolidated snow from 0-30cm then about 3-5cm of large grained fist snow followed by ~50cm of four fingers and 20-30cm of unconsolidated snow. By Friday morning, that November 11-13 storm snow was noticeably drier and Thursday morning's snow had started to firm up. With overnight low temperatures, my thinking is that crust might start to come into play today. I would be more deliberate with the profile and take the time to do an ECT if I were going out again to some of these spots this weekend. And, however tempting, I would probably avoid the wind loaded areas that me and my friends were actively seeking out this week.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- AR
- Elevation
- 6000 ft
Wind slab popped on deep cut near ridgeline on Thursday. Avalanche ran relatively slow on unconsolidated, wetter snow. Slabs noticeably firmed up by Friday morning. Continued to ride these deeper pockets late into the day... unconcerned with step down or burial risk but very conscious of being pushed into or over something. Probably wouldn't touch them with the colder overnight temperatures coming into Saturday.