Weather
- Air Temp
- Warm
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
Few clouds and hot temps. Light winds at 11,800ft, but enough to help keep some upper elevation slopes cool.
Snowpack
A wetting snow surface was by far the most notable observation of the day. Wet loose avalanches were able to enter the weak faceted snowpack or run along old crusts. I was surprised to see a few wet loose avalanches run from 12,000ft on heavily wind-affected terrain. Those particular avalanches remained small, but nevertheless, they were able to get going in that terrain.
We targeted a test profile on an old hard slab at 11,000ft on a 35-degree east-facing slope. The HS was 160cm here. The hard slab was about 15 to 20cm thick and sitting on 1mm faceted grains. ECTP 2 SC. We also put a few snowmobile cuts on the slope without a result. While reactive in a test, this hard slab would have been difficult to trigger as this slab had enough support. Supported and/or concave slopes appear to be the majority of terrain features holding old hard slabs.
On our way up at 9,600ft, we noted a thin crust on a northerly-facing slope left over from yesterday's greenhouse event. We didn't further climb up northerly facing slopes to see how high that crust extended.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1
- Type
- WL
- Count
- 11
- Aspect
- SE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 11900 ft
Numerous small wet loose avalanches ran today, along with one large wet loose off of Cascade that put debris on the common route under the east face. Most of the activity we observed was on east aspects below treeline or east and southeast aspects near treeline. Westerly aspects weren't at peak heating by the time we left.