Quick report
- Cracking
- widespread
- Collapsing
- isolated
Toured out of Crystal Mountain Southback gate 10:00am. Widespread wind effect on all aspects created a dense, reactive slab ranging from 4-10 inches atop a slick freeze crust. We dug a hasty pit at the top of Sheep Lake Bowl, yielding concerning and non-forecasted results. The freeze crust had bonded with a second, lower crust layer forming a dense, 3” knife-hardness slab. Below this slab was a 4-5” layer of fist-hardness weakening snow. We we observed that this layer was faceting from the cold clear nights of the week prior. This lay atop a 3rd knife-hardness freeze crust layer. Performing a shovel shear test, the slab failed instantly upon column isolation, producing a Q1 shear on the lowest freeze crust, approximately 12” deep. Here, the new snow slab at the surface was only 4” deep. In areas with more loading, this present a dangerous recipe for a much larger avalanche if it stepped into this lower layer of facets. Collapsing of the upper crust during travel reinforced this possibility.