Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>With all the recent snow falling on top of the weak faceted surface that formed during our extended high pressure we stayed away from all steep terrain and stuck to low angle (less than 20°) slopes and ridgelines. The snowpack like most of us doesn't like rapid change, so we decided to give it a break and enjoyed a nice day wandering around in the mountains. </p> <p>We wanted to see if we could pick out any natural activity that may have occurred during the storm, but with all the precipitation and wind, it was hard to find any old avalanche crowns where we looked. </p> <p>It's easy to forecast for the rising avalanche danger when it's snowing and blowing and you can see the weak old snow surface. It's harder to forecast for the dropping danger, we have a very weak November style snowpack and just got a whallop of a mid-winter storm. Today, we talked about keeping things mellow and giving the snowpack a chance to settle out before going after any bigger lines.</p>
Snowpack
Snow surface was mostly low density new snow, but there were some areas were it was quite cakey and had a thin soft wind crust on the surface. This didn't affect the travel and the lower angle skiing was world class. Photo below showing sky coverage and some new snow settlement around the bases of the trees. There was some spectacular wind drifting across the exposed slopes above treeline.