Quick report
Went for a quick lap on the North side of Mt Olsen. My goals were to track new snow, look for recent avalanches, and monitor stability.
I found 40 to 50 cm of new settled storm snow in the Virginia Lakes area. I observed several recent avalanches from yesterday that you can view in the avalanche attachments.
We found minimal signs of instability, although we kept slope angles reasonable and we did not really get into above treeline terrain. The day-old avalanches that I viewed from a distance all seemed to initiate on steep slopes just lee of ridgelines in alpine terrain.
I viewed several wind slab and dry loose avalanches that occurred yesterday mid-stormWeather
- Air Temp
- 25
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 30-50
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Mostly sunny, cold and calm in the morning. Clouds rolled in and obscured the sky by mid-morning. Temps remained below freezing and winds were light out of the northwest at 11k.
Snowpack
- 30-50 cm of new snow between the parking lot at summit.
- Frozen melt/freeze snow underneath everywhere that snow existed prior.
- Some graupel at the old/new interface, but did not seem to contribute to instability, shear quality, or collapsing and cracking.
- Clouds were keeping new snow cold.
- Snow was more dense than yesterday.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 11200 ft
Debris from an avalanche on north face of Sout Peak. Could not see a crown, but likely originated as wind slab at ridgeline.