Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Regarding shooting cracks and collapsing, it was really quiet out there. Stomping or crossing suspect test slopes and/or taking a ski off to plunge step only produced one collapse. We traveled on northerly-facing slopes up to 10,400ft and southerly-facing slopes up to 11,600ft.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- light
Beautiful day with a partly cloudy sky and mild temps. Winds picked up through the day with plumes on the high peaks and ridgelines. Snow transport was generally light, but still enough to pop at least one natural avalanche.
Snowpack
Ski pen now sits at 10cm, down from about 20cm yesterday afternoon. This made for some excellent skiing even on the low-angled slopes. Boot pen is still deep, to your hips or as deeper. The mid to upper elevations had lots of wind-affected snow, but it was still skiing well today. An ECT test at 10,700ft, ESE aspect, 35-degree slope, produced both moderate and hard results a two mid-storm interfaces. Steep south to southwest facing slopes had roller balls below 11,000ft.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Type
- SS
- Count
- 31
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9800 ft
Widespread natural cycle up to D2.5 on many northerly and easterly facing slopes at all elevations. Some activity on westerlies as well. Estimate that most ran 12/3, some probably 12/2. Some notables include several slides from Schuylkill Ridge that reached valley floor, Mineral Point east face to valley floor, and Climax Chutes reached the Lower Loop Trail at valley floor. We observed two large persistent slabs run today: One on Schuylkill Ridge (triggered by a solar sluff?), and one in the Martini, triggered by wind drifting this afternoon. Plus a west facing persistent slab on Baldy looked fresh today.