Ophir Peak

We toured on Ophir Peak this morning. Air temps were notably warm with light wind when we arrived at Tahoe Meadow around 9:30 am. We encountered some mostly-supportable melt-freeze crust along our approach to the 9,200' summit. By 10:30 am, wet snow was encountered on the summit in sun exposed areas. Descending the steeper N aspect terrain, we began to encounter surface wet snow and we triggered rollerballs off of ski turns at 9,100'. By the time we reached 9,000' we were triggering large numbers of pinwheels in reasonably steep N aspect terrain. By the time we reached 8,800', we were into deeper wet snow in all but the deepest of shaded areas. Down near 8,300' were able to easily trigger large pinwheels. All signs pointed to the presence of a wet loose avalanche problem becoming widespread in northerly aspect terrain today.

We saw a few size D1 wet loose avalanches in the surrounding area that had occurred sometime in the last 48 hours. It some areas it was possible that they had occurred today.

Size D1 wet loose avalanches observed.