Quick report
- Aspect
- North
- Red Flags
- Rapid Warming
- Elevation
- 2713 m
- Slope Angle
- 32°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>While it was warm and the snow was damp we did not see any fresh wet activity today. </p>
Went into white pine with the objective of getting eyes on the alpine and assessing the snowpack in an area with a deep snowpack. We dug two pits in North facing, sheltered terrain at 8900' and 9600' both of which had overall good stability within the upper 1 - 1.5 m of the snowpack which was as far as we dug down. Snow depths at each location were close to 3 m. Implications are that we might be turning the corner in areas with deeper snowpacks as our various PWLs become deeply buried. I'm most suspicious of periphery zones and repeater paths as the most likely places to trigger a persistent weak layer avalanche.
While we didn't travel in the alpine today, we observed many recent tracks off the N side of Lake Peak, as well as some tracks on Red Baldy. The crown on Red Baldy that was reported on 2/21 seemed to be filling in from blowing snow. Conditions in the alpine are still looking pretty thin for February with quite a bit of wind affect.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The Basal facets and Late January PWLs were buried over 1.5 M in the areas we traveled today and we didn't dig far enough down to reach them. We went looking for a potential mid-february weak layer in the upper pack but were not able to identify it in snowpits. </p> <p>A crust this AM indicated a refreeze last night. Warming above 9000' seemed to be kept at by increasing clouds although below 9000' snow was damp on all aspects by the afternoon. We didn't observe any fresh wet avalanche activity or rollerballs. </p>
There's still powder to be found on the Northerlies above 9000'. Below 9000' snow on all aspects is damp. Solars have a crust.