Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
Low danger in observed terrain, but suspect one could find small, reactive wind slabs on upper elevation, southerly slopes just below ridgeline. The upper snowpack is weakening and will continue to do so given the forecast outlook. Good riding conditions in shallow soft snow found on northerly slopes that lacked tracks or chunks. Travel conditions were very reasonable except on firm crusty snow in forested terrain.
Signs of instability limited to southerly aspects that accumulated wind drifted snow on Jan 19th. Plenty of cracking and reactivity where freshly drifted, but there wasn't enough snow in this area to build a legitimate slab.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Cool and calm through the morning with slowly increasing high clouds into the afternoon.
Snowpack
The 5-10cm of new from Jan 16th was redistributed onto southerly aspects. Near-surface facets to 2mm, in most areas, not melting down on low angle, southerly slopes at midday. On all aspects, the top ~30cm is a mix of facets and thin crust layers down to the decomposing Jan 10th crust. ECT's produced mixed results, CT's consistently produced sudden fractures in faceted snow just above and below the Jan 10. Layers below the crust increase in hardness and are composed of small rounded grains showing signs of faceting. Strong temperature gradient observed in uppermost layers.
Avalanche
There were a number of loose snow avalanches < D2 on southerly aspects at mid and upper elevations. Hard to determine the exact timing of most without getting close to debris and seeing if dusted by new snow from Jan 16th. Suspect most were related to the most intense period of sun and warming last Sunday through Wednesday, with a few more releasing on the 18th or 19th. The most notable avalanches were the D2.5 glide that ran well into the Boulderfield and a D2 glide from the northeast aspect of Huntoon directly below the top. Both are frequent offenders when it comes to glide avalanches. They either released late afternoon on Wednesday the 15th, or maybe with rapid cooling shortly thereafter. No fresh slab avalanches were observed.