Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
We observed shallow wind slabs on SE specific aspects that we traveled through near ridgelines, but that's not to say that wind slabs don't exist on any other aspects. Other than the windslab problem, the snowpack seemed to be generally right side up with good structure and stability. We did not observe any propagation in our tests (from snow surface down to the EFC). Snowpack was generally observed to be right side up in our travels through N, E and S facing aspects. We observed some reactive shallow wind slabs on the SE side of the ridge leading up to Tye peak, approx 1-2'' thick on the surface. Light snow transport was observed during the day on ridge tops.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 25
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- About 10cm during our tour
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Very active weather around Stevens Pass. We had everything light snow and obscured skies, to heavy snow, to clear sunny skies several times throughout the day. There was light snow transport intermittently throughout the day along ridge tops. Even though the sun was out for parts of the day, there was no significant warming and no signs of warming snow were observed.
Snowpack
We performed a snow profile on a N aspect at 5200' elevation. The structure of the snowpack was generally right side up. See picture below for more information. We performed a Compression Test and got results CT4 (Q3) Down 25cm, CT15 (Q3) Down 40cm, and CT21 (Q2) Down 65cm. We also performed an Extended Column Test, and got results ECTN6 Down 34cm, ECTN19 Down 45cm, and ECTN28 Down 63cm. Stability was good at this pit location, and we felt confident to ski North facing slopes that didn't have an obvious wind slab. The only other thing to note in our pit was the presence of healing facets between 185 and 230 cm. While we did see straight edges on the crystal card, and hence labeled them as a mixed form, we saw significantly more rounded corners than straight edges. We did not dig past the Early February Crust, which in our pit location was at 185cm.