Raven's Ridge

We skinned up Raven’s Ridge to an elevation of 2,400’ to see how touchy the buried surface hoar layer is. At around 2,000’ we started seeing it in our hand pits. Between 2,000 and 2,400’ we experienced localized shooting cracks and small whumpfs underneath us. There was about 1’ of snow on top of upright buried surface hoar that failed easily in snowpit tests. We are not sure how widespread this problem is in Summit Lake but we were not surprised to find it in the trees sheltered from the wind. Where it exists we are concerned it will be easy to trigger an avalanche large enough to bury a person. 

Multiple hand pits confirmed a layer of upright surface hoar (20 to 30mm) that was anywhere from 5 to 12” deep. In our snowpit it was 12” deep and failed easily in our test pits (ECTP5 and PST 31/100 end). In this pit the slab above the surface hoar was softer (4F) with a 1F hard bed surface. Total snowpack depth 155cm.