Quick report
Short tour before heading to the resort today. Conditions made travel beyond Swift/Bagley zones prohibitive, and few other users were out. Perhaps not surprisingly, the riding conditions in the resort were superior to the backcountry. I experienced little to no instability within the snowpack on this tour. In the areas that I skied, HST ranged between 0 and 6" and appeared to be bonding well to the Solstice crust. I expected to find some cracking and potentially isolated wind slabs near the rollover in Ten Minute trees, but a ski cut did not produce any results. Of note, my tracks down Cheap Date were completely filled-in when I skinned back out from Ten Minute, less than half an hour after making them.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 26-32
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Rain Elevation
- 3500
- Recent Snowfall
- 15
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Temps dropped throughout the day, with the rain line moving from ~3500' in the morning (0900ish) to closer to 2500' in the afternoon (1400ish). Wind loadig was constant throughout the day, with stronger gusts in the afternoon. Snowfall intensity increased from S1 in the morning to S3-5 in the afternoon.
Snowpack
The Solstice crust appears to have locked up the snowpack pretty well, and, at least at lower elevations, new storm is bonding quite well to it. I did not travel particularly far or high today due to conditions, but I imagine higher alpine zones with more snow accumulation and wind transport likely harbored reactive wind and/or storm slabs today.