Quick report
- Aspect
- Northwest
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking
- Elevation
- 2713 m
- Slope Angle
- 17°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>There have been an abundance of human triggered avalanches reported lately. There are still small faceted grains from the November dry spell but here they were 1f hard and rounding. </p>
Josh and I managed to conduct an exciting compression test with mostly unexciting results. Claudia enjoyed documenting. On the second to last strike of my shovel we had a failure on graupel in between two layers of dense snow. Through a regrettably poorly documented shovel shear test we also found clean shears in density changes in the upper snowpack and at the lower graupel layer. We mostly dug down to check out how the old facets were doing.
Pictured above are two serious and dedicated snow scientists testing whether or not 6 feet of snow will insulate the pwl from a cold wet smack on a shovel. Pictured below are the persistent weak grains in question.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The winds were swirling around the basin and I would imagine that subtle terrain features could easily hold cross loaded pockets facing any direction. Winds were stronger at higher elevations. They were still moving snow at lower elevations. </p> <p>There was a very large very dense slab resting on top of some rounding facets. I imagine it would be unlikely to trigger this layer with the weight of a skier but a skier anywhere near an avalanche on this layer would not be a skier for much longer. </p>
About 2 inches of snow had fallen by 1330. It was quickly being rearranged by the wind. Some exposed areas had a breakable crust but overall the riding conditions were quite enjoyable. We had the most fun in mid elevation trees.