Quick report
New snow was deep, and it just kept on snowing throughout the day. An obvious weakness existed at the new snow/old snow interface about 18" deep, which is likely where the one human-triggered avalanche was reported. Wind was light to moderate, with large, soft snow ripples visible everywhere during the small window of slight visibility when we were able to step out a little further.
1x natural, 1x human triggered avalanche. See avalanche descriptions in avalanche section.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- light
- Rain Elevation
- 1500
- Recent Snowfall
- 43
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Snowfall continued all day, with at least another 10 inches falling on vehicles parked at 2500ft. Snowlines dropped to about 1000ft in the afternoon. Wind was light and predominantly from the north, downslope, at the Salad Bowl.
Snowpack
Pits dug on opposite aspects yielded a similar structure and depths to layers. The new/old interface that was buried the previous night was 43cm, or 17" deep. The SW aspect had a notable soft crust at that interface, about 1F+ in hardness, but the east aspect just had a hardness change, with snow transitioning from Fist to 4 Finger. Older crusts that we've been watching are now around a meter, or just over 3 feet deep.
When I was isolating a column for a shovel tilt test, the new snow ran on the older layer beneath. Both compression tests and extended column tests had too much low density surface snow to have conclusive results.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5
- Type
- SS
- Aspect
- SW
- Trigger
- AM
- Elevation
- 5000 ft
One large natural avalanche was heard coming from Survey Point, E, 4800ft at about 9:30am in extreme terrain that runs frequently. One snowmobile triggered avalanche was reported midday on a SW aspect at 5000ft. Visibility was poor, aside from one brief window with slightly more views, where we didn't see any other natural avalanches in the basin.