Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>I didn't see evidence of a natural cycle but we started a bit later and stuck to a scoured ridge line for the up. Kicked a few small winddrifty cornices with minimal results. The generally right side up snow needed steeper angles to run free. Skiing over a few small rollovers, the snow would pile up in front of me, gain a bit of speed, and then slow to let me pass. Sloughs at 30 to 35 degrees moved slower than a skier could. NW winds were slabbing up snow directly on ridgelines making trail breaking annoying but not terrible. On scoured faces, we could feel the old snow surface but it was easy enough to get a ski into to establish the skin track.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>There's enough snow out there that in steeper terrain, I could see sloughs being a problem. Definitely powerful enough to knock you off your feet and bury you deep enough you'd need help extricating yourself. We avoided terrain traps down but utilized small steep gully walls as test slopes with minimal results. </p> <p>In isolated areas where we traveled, one might've been able to tickle something out but for the most part the generally right side up storm snow was well behaved. In steeper terrain where sloughs might be able to run longer and entrain more snow, lower density changes might've come into play but we didn't venture into such terrain. </p>
Storm total at 9600' was about ~25" and ~12" in the drainage bottom. Noted some deeper density changes that would keep even wider boards down and contributed to the deeeep feeling the snow had today.