Quick report
Slab faceting is driving the trend towards stability in this area. However, there are plenty of places where the slab is maintaining enough integrity to keep the persistent slab problem at the top of mind when choosing terrain.
I did not experience any collapsing. Small, recent wind drifts produced some small cracks that did not extend more than a foot or two from my skis.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Mostly cloudy at the start of the tour around noon, with clouds gradually clearing from west to east in the afternoon. Skies were mostly clear in Smiley by shortly after sunset. Light winds blowing out of the SE in exposed upper elevation terrain, otherwise it was pretty calm.
Snowpack
Continuing to observe the faceting of the slab overlying 11/30 weak layer. This process is happening at all elevations but is most pronounced below the level of the inversions. Even upper elevation slabs are undergoing significant faceting, which is the main driver of the trend toward stability. This makes for some unique skiing where stiff wind slabs have faceted into surfy sastrugi — fun!
Surfaces: continuing to observe the result of widespread surface hoar formation that occurred over the past few nights. Preservation is specific to shaded slopes that are sheltered from the wind, though I did observe a fair amount of SH extending even into more exposed terrain up to at least 10,000'.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Type
- HS
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- W
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9900 ft
I observed one older, unreported avalanche above Cherry Creek. I don't have a great idea when this slide happened, it may have been more recent than listed. I also observed what looked like dense, blocky, old debris below the NE face of Galena Peak. I did not have a great view down there, and the light was flat, but I'm fairly certain this was debris from a large avalanche.