Hanging Valley

Quick report

Cracking

isolated

We approached today wanting to get a look at upper elevation snowpack in sheltered areas and view impacts from the wind event over the weekend. Wind has scoured most of the ridge lines and ribs in the valley and deposited snow in sheltered gullies as is common in the Chugach State Park. Surface conditions are variable, consisting of scoured and wind crusted snow. In our snow pits we observed weak faceted snow at a mid depth as well as depth hoar at the base. We will continue to monitor these weak layers as the season progresses. We observed evidence of a few days old D1 avalanche within the Hanging Valley. The slab was likely naturally triggered by rapid loading during the wind event over the weekend. Pictures attached. We also observed shooting cracks propagating a few feet out from our skis while skiing back to the car on a similar elevation and aspect to our snowpit (east aspect, 3600 ft).

Snowpack

The first quarter mile of the approach consists of soft surface snow above a thin, easily breakable crust and a shallow snowpack of less then 2'. The remainder of the approach varied from a breakable wind crust over facets to short sections of supportable crust. We dug two snow pits and found mixed results. One pit had no propagating results while the other only 15' away had a propagating fracture about 1' below the snow surface on a layer of facets (ECTP14). We also observed depth hoar at the base of the snowpack. Our goal was to target a sheltered pocket of snow near a the edge of a gully that would be representative of start zones in Chugach State Park.

Hanging Valley

Quick report

Weather

Snowpack

Avalanche