Quick report
Challenging travel conditions (unsurprisingly) below 3500’. At the Salmon La Sac sno park at 2400’, there is not enough snow to skin or ski anywhere except the road. Even where we ended our uphill on a NW sheltered aspect at 4700’, there was only 65cm of snow. No cracking or collapsing observed (likely due to lack of slab, not lack or weak layer).
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
Snowpack
Dug a pit on a NW aspect at 4700’ to investigate the buried surface hoar. The surface hoar layer of concern was easily identified in the pit visually 22cm from the surface. There was only 2cm of facets between this 2/13 surface hoar and the knife hard 2/8 crust. The surface hoar failed in a compression test after 1 tap from the elbow (CTM @22cm, Q1). It collapsed without propagation in our extended column test (ECTN14 @ 22cm). Because of the limited snow separating the 2 layers of concern, they effectively failed together. With only 22cm of 4F hard snow above the surface hoar, there wasn’t enough of a slab at this site to be worrisome. However, it’s not hard to imagine how it could be far more concerning in locations with more new snow or wind. Also of note - 1cm of 1mm surface hoar/near surface facets were forming above 4000’ above a 1F melt freeze crust. These were staying cold at 1pm on a West aspect (surface snow temp (-4C).