Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Arctic temperatures and northly outflow this past week worked the snowpack surface rapidly weakening layers. We didn't find any slab over these weak layers in this area but had there been, it would be an extremely weak and fragile snowpack structure. Where you might find a slab over this setup, or any future load (wind, snow, rain, etc) we could expect dangerous avalanche condtions with wide propagation potential.
There was cracking underfoot as we climbed in elevation - failing around the EOY crustWeather
- Air Temp
- 5
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Recent Snowfall
- 5
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
The clouds became broken later in the day, temperatures we're plenty cold and the winds were calm.
Snowpack
- Found the EOY crust down 20cm, it was a brittle 2-3cm crust that was collapsing underfoot. It was literally falling out of the test pit sidewall and failure below the crust was easy with extended column test propagating at ECTP1.
- Below The EOY crust was rotten, faceted snow that became only slightly more dense down to the another brittle curst nicknamed the Christmas Eve crust. Shovel shear tests revealed easy failures below the Christmas Eve crust.
- Temperatures as low as -14F this past week accelerated the weakening or faceting of snow grains, especially above and below melt-freeze cursts.