Quick report
Quick tour to assess surface conditions pre-storm. We observed no obvious signs of instability. We generally found poor surface conditions for the new storm snow to bond with. The widespread weak snow surface was not a concern today, but is worth noting now before it's actively buried this weekend during the storm.
No obvious signs of instability.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 1-2
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
The calm before the storm so to speak. We experienced relatively benign conditions with increasing wind speeds and building cloud cover ahead of the incoming front.
Snowpack
We set out to observe the pre-storm snow surface conditions in middle elevations around the compass rose today.
- We found a mixed breakable/supportable sun crust formed on solar (W-SW-S-SE) aspects from with 3cm of near surface facets sitting on top (weak snow for the big storm to land on)
- We also observed a 20cm thick layer of weak small-grained near surface facets buried just below the 12/7 and 12/12 dustings of snow on the nothern half of the compass (NW-N-NE-E)
- We dug a quick pit at 9300' on a NNW 15* slope (HS 65cm) that fractured on moist basal facets in stability testing (ECTN26 @ 5cm)
Avalanche
No avalanches observed.