Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking, Collapsing
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>I would imagine yesterday the snow was quite reactive just after the storm, but even today I experienced a few good collapses and the snow conditions were very inverted. There was lots of cracking in the new snow that was sitting on the old weak snow surface. The winds had really stiffened up the snow around the Bald Mt. area.</p>
It looked more like winter today with fresh snow and lots of riders out for a ride and nice powder snow. It is still pretty thin off the roads and people were keeping it safe and not venturing off trail.
Spotted this small natural wind slab avalanche on a low angle slope at the base of Bald Mt. Looks like dense wind blown snow overloaded the old weak surface snow. It was about 100 feet wide, a foot deep on a northeast facing slope above 10,000 feet in elevation.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p> </p> <p>Winds and fresh snow have created dense wind drifts and I observed a recent natural wind slab that released on a low angle slope on a northeast aspect on Bald Mt. This wind slab was sitting on top of the old weak surface snow and could not support the weight of the slab. </p> <p>Not quite sure if the old weak faceted snow will become a persistent weak layer going forward, but right now I will keep digging to around to see where it is and how it reacts to more snow and wind loading.</p>
The storm snow has settled out to about 8-10" at the trailhead and a nice foot or so up around Hayden Pass and Mirror Lake. Nice medium density snow to help fill in all the rocks, while I was finding quite stiff and dense surface snow around Bald Mt. making for some upside down conditions.