Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
Limited amounts of cracking in new snow. Some shooting cracks in harder wind slabs. Evidence of several avalanches during the last storm cycle (see below).
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- NA
- Recent Snowfall
- ~140 within 72 hours
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Clear until ~11 am when we lost visibility.
Snowpack
During our travel, we found a few small reactive wind slabs on south-facing aspects near treeline and encountered minor fracturing within the storm layer. We dug a pit at 11,800 on an east-facing aspect below Rustler Peak in the Humphreys Cirque (Attached). Within this pit, our highest persistent weak layer (melt-freeze crust with facets) had been buried by 170cm of snow, making it difficult to assess. However, within the top >100 cm of snow, the snowpack had high strength, moderate structure, and moderate energy with limited propagation propensity.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Count
- 2
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 12000 ft
We found debris from several avalanches that released during the last storm cycle. The first avalanche debris and crown outline was located in the Upper Bowl, occurring naturally while the terrain was closed, on a highly wind-loaded pocket on an NW aspect at ~11,800. The avalanche was large enough to bury a person (~D2). We found evidence of additional avalanches on the east and southeast aspects of the Humphreys Cirque. These avalanches were older (>36 hours old) and more challenging to estimate size due to yesterday's snow accumulation; however, they were likely ~D1-D2. We estimated that at least 3 avalanches occurred in the Humphreys Cirque during the last cycle.