Quick report
- Cracking
- specific
- Collapsing
- isolated
A lot of new snow and wind came through this zone in the last 24 hours, and more continued throughout the day. We found widespread but stubborn wind slabs on north and east aspects at middle and upper elevations today. We suspect more sensitive wind slabs could still be found in other zones. We did not find reactivity with the persistent slab problem today; however, weak persistent layers still exist within the snowpack.
We could trigger cracking in wind loaded terrain easily, however the cracks were not shooting.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- light
- Recent Snowfall
- 45-50
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
The weather was variable throughout the day. Squalls of moderate snowfall would pass through regularly then stop, and then the sun would break through the clouds for a time. The temperature felt cool but not cold. Wind from the southwest also varied from light to moderate throughout the day.
Snowpack
There was a dusting of new snow at the trailhead around 3800'. Around 6000', the depth of new snow began to increase quite a bit. At middle and upper elevations, we found approximately 1 1/2' of new snow. This new snow was moderate density. Around 6700', we began to encounter wind affected snow. The snow surface felt much stiffer underneath our skis. Ripples on the snow surface, wind loaded snow on north and east aspects, and continued snow transport indicated moderate-strong winds from the southwest had come through last night and continued to blow throughout the day.
We dug a pit to just below a melt freeze crust formed in early-February. The full snow depth at this pit was just under 7' (210cm). We did not find as apparent faceting above and below this crust as we have been finding in many other locations within our forecast region. The crust itself seemed to be faceting however. We performed an extended column test and got a hard propagating result at the new and old snow interface (ECTP24 47cm down).