Quick report
We traveled up East Peak, into Cement, over to Lakes Basin, then to Big Crow Basin, looking to catalog the recent AR event and recalibrate our minds moving forward.
The big takeaways were that the cornices have trimmed back significantly, but some are still overhung and look primed to fall. Most avalanche activity spotted was below a cornice line. You can still see old ski tracks, skin tracks, and footprints from before the AR event. We spotted a few very large slides, but honestly, not as many as I was anticipating based on the reports from elsewhere in the zone.
We lost quite a bit of snow. Bare ground is widespread, especially on wind and sun-exposed slopes. The lake in Lakes Basin appeared to be melting out, and water was pouring off a cornice in the warm weather.
Travel was manageable enough in the moist snow. Skiing was a little harder but not as bad as I would have expected.
We were able to push snow on steep, unsupported features. Rollerballs and pinwheels were common with ski turns in the heavy snow.Weather
A rain shower in the morning, then partly sunny with passing clouds throughout much of the day. A few of them were dark, but we never got the thunderstorms while we were out. On the ridge, there was a light breeze. Hot elsewhere.
Snowpack
The snowpack is fairly easy to understand right now. There's moist snow, followed by drier snow, followed by a crust from our February AR event. The amount of moist snow depends on elevation, the higher you go, the less there is.
Digging at 6700' N aspect, there was at most 22cm of moist snow. The Feb AR crust was down 64 cm.
No significant test results.
Avalanche
- Size
- D3 R4
- Type
- WS
- Count
- 3
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 6800 ft
Lots of recent avalanche activity. Widespread wet loose and cornice collapses. A handful of very large wet slabs spotted.