Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
See notes in snowpack and weather. Overall, very touchy day. One of the spiciest days I've had in the Friendly and Phantom zones in a while. Storm slab problems were very real today. The new snow interface became apparent above 4600' or so where the newer, drier snow from this morning was sitting on top of a 1F/pencil crust. We did not experience and cracking of whumpfs on the Phantom uptrack but on our first run down we got a convex roll to slide (was very predictable). We skied a confined gully over to Friendly and got that to go too. On the skintrack across Friendly we experienced multiple whumpfs. Long story short, any slope that was open and unsupported was suspect. In the trees open slopes seemed much better supported and overall stable. But convexities and open slopes were angry today.
Weather
Started ~1245PM. Cloudy and light snow to start. As telemetry showed, quite wet below 4200'. Above 4200' snow became much drier. Around 130PM full bluebird conditions from 130PM-230PM. Tree bombs galore...lots of mortar shell sized boogers falling from the skies. Around 230PM full on storm came back, with strong winds and blowing snow.
Snowpack
Dug a pit in the clearing on S Face of Snoqualmie. HS: 250cm Pit depth: 130cm Surface > -10cm: Fist -10cm>-40cm: 4F -40cm >45cm: 1F @~55cm from surface: pencil ECTN12 ~45cm down
Avalanche
Got two small, isolated slides to go: one on a convex roll in Phantom Trees, and one in a confined chute down towards Friendly Trees. Both were intentional, ran from my feet, and did not catch or carry me or my ski partner.