Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
Toured up to the lower Mammoth Rock trees (N-NW aspect, 8700 ft) mid-storm to take a look at formation of storm and wind slab development at around 11:00 on 20230302. The sky was obscured, with extreme winds and intense blowing snow at the time of travel. We traveled in sheltered, densely treed areas as much as possible to avoid exposure to overhead hazard and high winds. I observed large pillows of wind-deposited snow, and wind-stiffened but supportable surface conditions with limited cracking. We observed no collapsing during our tour. I found high variability of wind deposits throughout the tour, with some areas stripped to old snow crust layers, and other areas with thick, lens-shaped deposits of wind-drifted snow. Several hand shear tests along the tour produced smooth, planar fractures approximately 20-25 cm down with Hand-Easy to Hand-Moderate effort within the new snow. In areas with F hard snow, the surface slab broke, while areas with snow closer to 4F- hardness fractured as a cohesive slab upon pulling the isolated column downhill. Tests were performed on slope angles of between 15-20 degrees. A few bounce tests on wind pillows produced surprisingly limited cracking.