Quick report
- Aspect
- Southwest
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3261 m
- Slope Angle
- 25°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Rime crust near the surface in a facet sandwich with a hardy windslab on top.</p>
This was my first day of the winter getting aquainted with the snowpack. I see a few folks have mentioned a graupel layer. I noticed what looked like a rime crust or a graupel/melt freeze crust. I refer to it in this observation as a rime crust. A crust none-the-less.
snowpilot.org is down so I will summarize my snowpit results below.
Snow depth 71cm
Compression Test: CT1 SC/Q1 @ 66cm from the ground (rounded snow just starting to facet that sits between the crust and the windslab). CT29 Q2/SC @ 0-3cm from the ground (facets turning to rounds).
The CT1 result was a little hard to interpret because it was so high in the snowpack and my shovel broke the slab up a bit. However from the CT, shovel sheer and general poking around it was clear the layer was sensitive.
Windslab was roughly the top 3 cm of the snowpack and knife hardness.
Photos: The vicinity, wind affected snow surface, broken windslab in snowpit, rime/graupel crust
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The development of wind slabs, on aspects and elevations that I travel on today, was in isolated areas. I observed more wind drifted snow as I got higher and in more open areas.</p> <p>Multiple layers in the snowpack have faceted. Today the more reactive layers were higher in the snowpack, top 10cm. Underneath the hard windlab was a layer of rounded snow that was hardly starting to facet, but with such a difference in hardness from the layer above, was quite sensitive.</p>
Snow surface is variable and aging from lack of recent snowfall.