Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Quick tour at Stevens inbounds today. It was breezy with mainly westerly winds. On the way up frontside I noticed some wind effect/scouring from the W winds. Along the ridge from jupiter to southern cross there were pillows of wind loaded snow on the leeward (E/SE) aspects. I dug a pit at ~5500’ on a SE aspect just below the ridge on the lee side and found surprisingly right side up snow (see picture) above a crust about 40cm below surface. It seems like this particular location was somewhat shielded from the wind. As I descended down the backside I found increasingly wind affected snow. Below 5k’ on SE aspects there was widespread wind effect with the top 6” or so forming into soft but cohesive wind slabs (see picture). I couldn’t trigger anything on test slopes but these slabs cracked under my skis. I stuck to lower angle slopes and the ski quality was decent.