Quick report
- Collapsing
- isolated
Skied steep southerly terrain; had to carefully avoid the firm wind slabs that formed last night below freshly corniced ridgelines. Once we got below the windloaded zone, no avalanche concerns noted in southerly terrain.
We got a few collapses on basal weak layers while traveling through flat terrain just below 10,000' near the Beaver Ponds. Slab thickness there was 18" or less. Wind slabs produced some stubborn cracking only 6' long or so. No other signs of instability.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Light to moderate northwesterly winds, with some light transport today. Most of the transport occurred last night.
Snowpack
Last night's northwest winds formed dense wind slabs localized to just below ridgeline up to 18" thick. Some slabs were too hard for me to want to mess with, the softer ones would crack up to 6'. On southerlies, the fresh snow had a thin sun crust from yesterday's solar. On a SE aspect at 11,500', the 12/7 crust was supportive to skis (3cm thick, P- hard), and the 11/30 crust was embedded in the ground, so I saw no persistent slab concerns here. On a sheltered northerly slope, a surface hoar layer buried about 60 cm deep produced moderate, propagating results. Basal weak layers were also present but didn't produce failures in pits, but did collapse on a few flat slopes where the snowpack was less than 60 cm deep.