Quick report
- Aspect
- North
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 3231 m
65cm of snow in northern facing chutes under murdock mountain. only 20cm on the flats. Heavy wind loading was the driver of deeper snow in the chutes.
skin and boot up showed mostly faceted snow from the ground up with some layers of harder snow, all of which could be penetrated to the ground during booting and made skinning a bit more difficult.
Did CT and ECT with no results even though there was obvious crusts and a firmer 5-6" layer of snow ~5" above the ground.
There is a thin layer of very breakable decomposing crust up to 1" on the surface that could support incoming snow. It did not affect skiing as you could easily turn while breaking through the crust.
Danger level will increase with new snow this week.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>observed 3ft+ on Northern facing chutes and 4' at top of chute we skied. Huge variability in snow pack seeing a few thin crusts but some areas had spotty 5-6" wind slab ~5" above the ground. Nothing consistent and no propagation on CT and ECT</p> <p>overall it was a facet and crust party. Generally skied as all facets with a very breakable thin to 1" crust on top. </p> <p> </p> <p>Pit showed many layers of faceted snow and crusts, none of which were reactive in tests. one lower layer showed some evidence of wind slab, but was isolated, much of the boot up was 3' of facets to the ground.</p> <p> </p> <p>The main point was high variability that will be a PWL all winter. </p> <p> </p> <p>Note the deeper snow seemed to be isolated to the chutes</p>