Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
While traveling the ridgeline at 6,100' we unexpectedly initiated 35 foot shooting crack through a wind slab that resulted in a large cornce fall. Some rollerballs and loose wet snow was observed on an E aspect but no propogation or entrainment was observed.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 40
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Very warm and sunny day. Felt like April.
Snowpack
A complex snowpack was observed that typically had three distinguishable crusts with the January Drought Layer (JDL) being the deepest. Water from recent rain has percolated through much of the snowpack and saturated thin layers above the crusts on solar aspects. This has also rounded most of the grains in the upper snowpack. We were only able to find weakness in the JDL at 6300 ft on a NW aspect. At this site our ECT did not visably propogate, but fractured very cleanly with shovel shear. A PST showed propogation potential (PST35/100END) 80cm from surface. On the S aspects we were able to observe an ECTN16 below the recent rain crust and an ECTN24 on the JDL.