Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
We encountered rain at the summer trailhead, transitioning to snow with increasing elevation. The upper snowpack was wet, with shallow ski penetration. We observed a limited number of collapses, and snowpack tests produced easy to moderate failures. We observed recent D2 sized avalanches within the last 12 hours and debris piles/filled in crowns from days ago.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Snow through the morning with brief periods of visibility.
Snowpack
We dug in two different locations, one near the yurt and one higher on Peanut (see photos below). Both locations had similar make up of the recent crusts plaguing the snowpack. Two large column tests failed with moderate hits (11+13) on the sun crust which formed on the break in storms of the 12/20 down 45cm and a third on the 12/15 interface with 14 hits. CPST 18/100 END on the Late Nov Crust with facets above it (12/5). The higher up pit showed similar results with propagation on the Late Nov. Crusts down 100cm with 15 and 23 hits. The facets were dry and 6-10cm thick layer. We didn't hear any collapses on the tour. At the Pio study plot, the snow stake measured 103 cm. The SWE collection bucket was overflowing, totaling 3.86″ since 11/12/25. Some loss of sample volume is likely due to overflow; the bucket was replaced with a 2.0 double-stack configuration to better capture SWE during extended storm cycles.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2
- Count
- 5
- Aspect
- N
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 8700 ft