Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>As if to emphasize what we already knew about the poor snowpack structure, we got plenty of deep, throaty whoomphs as we travelled about, as if they were more at the ground and thus muffled by 3-4 feet of snow. </p>
Travel was to/past Red Pine Lake up to the mostly-treed sub-ridge that eventually goes up to the main LCC ridge. We dug a coupla pits in the north facing trees right at treeline at just over 10k to see what we could see and got some variable results depending on the wind exposure/shelter. The main takeaway was that there was a strong slab about 10 inches thick that popped out easily off of another 10 inch slab that popped out equally easily, and this was atop yet another thinner slab that was above sugar snow. Given this poor structure and the fact that - according to a wise old UAC sage - "nothing good ever comes from an East Wind" which created surface loading (see pic of a nice curler) makes for a complex-enough snowpack for an easily-confused mind that we kept our slope angles - and speeds! and expectations! - sufficiently low.
interestingly enough, however, that zone has so many big rocks that with so little snow (see pic) that the avy danger is probably not as great as the danger of bashing yourself into rocks.....
Snowpack
Even with yesterday's/overnight's wind, the snow surface wasn't too slabby.