North Fork Placid

My primary goals were to see how much precipitation was falling, what form it was falling in, and how our persistent weak layers were behaving.

This was a wet, grey day. Pavement and mud were wet when I arrived in Seeley in the early afternoon, with the distinct smell of rain in the air. Precipitation returned by mid afternoon, with steady rain falling below the rain line, and wet snow above. It rained as high as 7,000' initially, switching to snow by afternoon. At the end of the day, 2 inches of very wet snow accumulated up here, and the rain line had dropped to 5,500'.

A pit dug at 6,300'on a N aspect revealed a wet upper snowpack, with unfrozen percolation columns visible down to the 2/14 weak layer. Liquid water was pooled at the 2/23 layer, the 2/14 layer, and on the January drought surface. Snowpack tests did not produce any alarming results in standard loading steps, but you never feel great seeing water pooled on your weak layers. I continued to hit my shovel from the shoulder numerous times, eventually initiating a fracture on the January drought layer (down 2 feet) that propagated across the column. 

By 6,600', much of the upper snowpack was dry, with a wet cap of rained-on-snow in the upper 3-4 inches. Snowpack tests here produced repeated unstable scores with hard force, propagating first on small surface hoar at the 2/14 interface (21-26 taps) and then in larger surface hoar at the January drought surface (24-30 taps). As I travelled around on skis and snowmobile, I did not experience any cracking or collapsing involving these layers.

Expecting to see conditions deteriorate with this storm, with dry snow problems developing up high (wind slabs), wet snow problems down low and at middle elevations (wet loose and potential for wet slabs), and a weird mix in the space between. 

Some intentional ski cutting in low angle terrain above steeper test slopes produced some small, stubborn wet loose avalanches. These took a bit to entrain enough snow to be described as an avalanche, but once the snow was moving it didn't want to stop.