Quick report
The cold temperatures we've experienced over the past week have increased the production of facets (sugar snow) throughout the snowpack where I traveled today. On shaded north-facing slopes, it is possible to find soft snow, but aspects facing the sun are pretty firm. We did receive 1 inch of new snow overnight, which was better than nothing.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- few
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 3
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Beautiful day out in the mountains with 1" of new snow that fell overnight. Winds were light from the NW, with few clouds in the sky.
Snowpack
The past week of cold temperatures has continued to weaken the snowpack. My two snowpack tests didn't produce alarming results, but the structure in both spots was poor. In the two locations I dug, there were facets (sugar snow) of varying grain sizes throughout the snowpack.
I dug two pits, just below 7,000' on a SE and a West aspect. The height of the snow was 70-80cm, or just shy of 3 feet. On a SE aspect, the entire snowpack was pretty hard and generally right side up. Over on the West aspect, I would say the structure was worse. At this time, where I performed my evaluation, no slab exists above the weak snow layers. There are a couple of different bed surfaces (crusts), with weak snow above and below them. So, currently, we have two of the three ingredients necessary for a Persistent Slab avalanche problem. Only time will tell how things will shake out.