Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- specific
As we drove up to Mt. Rose summit, we saw large ripples on the open slopes in the Tamarack Peak area. Once we got out of the truck, we saw more signs of wind transport, like scoured snow on the windward side of Tamarack and cornices hanging over the leeward-facing slopes. The wind slabs felt dense and rested on top of lighter snow below them. We triggered shooting cracks on almost all the wind-loaded test slopes we stepped on but did not set any wind slabs in motion. The shooting cracks told us that the wind slabs remained unstable, and we avoided any steep wind-loaded slopes. From the top of Tamarack, we also saw a skier-triggered wind slab avalanche near the summit of Relay Peak (click here for the details).
The winds had affected the snow in some more sheltered areas as well. The most sheltered areas held softer, more consistent snow, but it still felt like the snow near the surface was more dense than the snow below (upside-down layering).
On our drive home, we noticed a few roller balls on the SE face of Incline Lake Peak at about 2 pm.
Stepping onto the edge of wind-loaded test slopes triggered long shooting cracks on most of them. One test slope also collapsed, making an audible whumpf.Weather
- Air Temp
- 30 °F
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- 15 to 20 cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
SW wind gusts along the ridges remained strong enough to transport small amounts of snow (most of the windward slopes had been heavily scoured already) and helped limit daytime warming. In the afternoon, we could see some clouds encroaching on the mostly sunny skies over the Sierra Crest.