Quick report
Found a wide variety of skiing conditions throughout the day. Mid and upper elevations showed stout evidence of high winds, with impressive sastrugi and bare ground dominating the upper elevations and ridgetops. To no surprise we found many glide cracks and glide avalanches that seemed to have released sometime this week all around us. Down low where the inversion had been treating snow surfaces kindly, there was great dry powder. Observed where a glide crack had released on the east face of Silvertip sometime between the last storm and now. Many very large glide cracks observed on the south face of Twin Peaks and all throughout the region as expected. Did not see any recent slab or loose snow avalanches in this area.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 8 at car and 32 at 4200'
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- None
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Started the day off with overcast skies that broke up to scattered by midday. Inversion still going strong today, blistery cold in the morning at low elevations and quite warm up high. Ridgetop W winds were strong until about 2pm where they died off to calm.
Snowpack
At lower elevations and in protected areas there was nice dry powder that is pretty faceted. At ridgetop and upper elevations we found breakable crust, impressive sastrugi, and bare ground. Dug three pits ~30 feet apart on a ENE face at 4200'. Snowpack in this location was variable and very transformed by high winds. Snowpack depths ranged from 150cm to 70cm. Overall we did three ECT tests and one PST test. Results: ECTN5 11cm down on grains below the surface windslab x3 ECTP15 22cm down on 1-2mm facets below a 3cm thick crust ECTN22 22cm in a pit 30ft away from where the propagating result was observed on same layer PST 40/100 END on the layer of 1-2mm facets 22cm down