Frog Lake Cliffs & Elephants Hump

It was impressively difficult to access Carson Pass today as neither of the SnoParks had been plowed as of 10:30am and the Red Lake parking area had a high chance of getting stuck. Although folks with very capable 4x4's were making it work, those of us in minivans opted against  trying our luck. The SnoPark on the south side of Carson Pass was cleared as of noon and we began investigating the new storm snow. After a few minutes of skinning we arrived at our first test slope. We kicked on small cornices and they broke easily. One of the first cornices broke about five feet in front of my ski, but nothing happened on the slope below. A short distance away on another test slope we broke the small cornice with no results on the slope below until my partner skied onto the slope and a shallow wind slab was triggered (immediately after I stopped filming!). We got a similar result next to Frog Lake a bit later in the day. 

Although a few windows of blue poked through the clouds during our tour, visibility was limited especially while we were on the plateau near Frog Lake. 

We dropped lower angle terrain towards Red Lake and then toured up Elephant's Hump. Below tree line we saw no signs of instability, even on a steep slope above the old road that one of us undercut before the other skied above it. Coverage was ample, but a few creeks are still open and deserve caution.  At roughly 8000' depth of snow was 105 cm and near our high point of 8900' on Elephant's Hump (in a somewhat wind loaded location) we measured 230 cms. 

Wind impacted areas showed cornice development and we triggered two small wind slabs on test slopes beneath or adjacent to small cornices. These slabs failed in the new storm snow between 10-15 cms deep.