Quick report
A significant amount of new snow in the canyon this storm. 14”+ but we never measured. The new to old snow wasn’t bonding well to the crusts that had formed this past week. The storm slab was mostly loose and dry, except places that had seen short periods of sun. The sun affected slopes had begun to consolidate the top layer of snow into a slab 2”+ thick and was cracking underfoot while skinning. We also saw sluff point releases on a variety of aspects. Collapsing occurred while ascending the West facing terrain south of the Swan Slide out of the South Fork of Darby. ~9800ft we experienced two whumphs near a ridgeline. The first was subtle but heard. The second minutes later was much louder and was felt. A partner says he heard it move across the slope away from him. We didn’t see any surface cracks and it occurred while boot packing, often punching our feet through the sun crust that had formed under the new snow. Collapsing occurred while ascending the West facing terrain south of the Swan Slide out of the South Fork of Darby. ~9800ft we experienced two whumphs near a ridgeline. The first was subtle but heard. The second minutes later was much louder and was felt. A partner says he heard it move across the slope away from him. We didn’t see any surface cracks and it occurred while boot packing, often punching our feet through the sun crust that had formed under the new snow. The terrain where this occurred was definitely steep enough to slide, though not measured. We assumed the settlement happed near the base of the snowpack or far enough to be a different sound than whumphs that occur near the surface. Perhaps the 1/4 layer? We didn’t investigate too heavily, but instead focused on getting off the face.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts