Wortmans
Quick report
No signs of instability were observed from the valley floor to 3600ft.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- none
- Rain Elevation
- Burried rain crust to 2300 feet
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
NE winds were ramping up towards 50mph on Thompson Pass creating ground blizzard conditions from the hairpin turn through the gap. Wortmans Valley remained free of wind at all observed locations up to the glacier and on the slope we rode from 3600ft. Only occasional flagging on high peaks was observed in our area.
Snowpack
From the valley floor up to about 2400 feet, we found variable amounts of dry wind-affected powder on top of a degrading, breakable rain crust. The crust was 8-10 inches deep on average. Small pockets of buried windslabs up to 8 inches thick were unreactive along our skin route. Above 2400 feet the snowpack structure improved with limited layering other than a few density changes that were unreactive in pit tests. No surface slab was present in our area.
Avalanche
No new avalanches were observed in our area. Numerous avalanches several days old were spotted in lower elevations. These were all D1-D2 wet loose or wet slabs. Additional old avalanches included a couple of D2 storm slabs that released off of the Island.