Rock Creek Schmoo - The Worst Kind of Warm

We wore Gore-Tex and skin wax as we slogged through Rock Creek in the rain.

• We saw natural rollerballs and small wet loose avalanches up to 10,500 feet. We triggered some rollers, too.
• We found poor snowpack structure in our snow pit near treeline at about 10,200 feet. We got snowpack test results indicating that a weak layer near the ground can propagate a failure across a slope.
• Periods of light to very-light rain were wetting the surface up to at least 10,400 ft.

With the weak snowpack getting wet and small natural avalanches, we abandoned our plan to get high enough to see the rain/snow line and potentially look for wind slabs up high.

Natural and intentionally triggered large rollerballs on all aspects near and below treeline with wet surface snow from warm temps and then rain on snow.

Surface:

• Warm temperatures and cloudy skies made for greenhouse conditions wetting the top inch of snow and making the top 3 inches moist where we looked below treeline. The snowpack became progressively drier above 9,500 ft., though the surface stayed wet as rain began to fall.
• The surface was re-freezeing into a zipper crust below treeline by 1:30 pm.

Structure:

• Old snow is weak at the bottom of the snowpack above 10,000 ft. It's continuous, and continuously poor structure, across north-facing slopes.
• We got snowpack test results indicating the weak layer's propensity to propagate a failure across a slope. (PST END 40/100)
• We found an east-facing slope at 10,400 feet and probed around. We did find weak snow at the base of the snowpack, but the layer was thinner and patchier across the slope. Snow depth: 80 cm, weak layer thickness: 5-10 cm.