Quick report
- Aspect
- East
- Red Flags
- Cracking, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3170 m
- Slope Angle
- 35°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>The red flags are out there and while it keeps my terrain choices conservative, it makes for exciting snow science observations. Collapsing- yep, we had it in flat meadows. Cracking - also had it often around our feet and machine skis. Finally, the snowpack structure continues to be horrendous, though we did note some strengthening in the basal facets of our snow pit. While a poor snowpack structure isn't unusual for our sweet mountains, this year's snowpack is particularly scary.</p>
I have been wondering if this will be one of those winters with a slow start and a strong spring. Will March and April bring us a lot of snow and avalanches? Happy to be back out in the snowy environments with the ol' leg back in service.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>We've got the wrong-side up kind of snowpack structure. I've got concern now as well for the most recent interfaces we saw in our pit near the snow surface.</p>
It appeared that a few inches had fallen and covered the road on our travels up from the Winter TH on snow machines. As we traveled through Geyser Pass to the East side of the range, we were greeted with a lot of deep, mostly unsupportable snow. We found ourselves punching all the way to the bottom of the snowpack at times with not only our boots, but with the snow machine tracks. We did stop to dig a pit and found some things that certainly caused alarm. Most notably, a very reactive slab near the surface of the snowpack. We experienced a notable collapse in a small meadow when we stopped our machines close together and also noted cracks propagating around our snowshoes as we stomped around to recover our powder-hungry machines. The snow depth was incredibly varied in our travels and we noted depths from 55cm to 125cm in sheltered meadows. We also observed somewhat recent avalanche debris that had crossed the road on Mellenthin's Eastern flanks in multiple areas. We also noted old roller balls on Southeasterly, sun-exposed slopes.