Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
My partner and I toured from Solitude up Silver Fork ascending the uptrack in the aspens. Lower on the skin track snow depths were quite shallow and new storm snow was only about 6". As we gained elevation the amount of snow increased from about 6" at 8200' to about 10-12" around 9400'. We dug a pit on an east aspect, 9400', and did not get full propogation on our ECT. The column failed on the weak facets around 15 taps but did not propogate across the column which was encouraging but not to be trusted. We skied skier's right of Brad's Line in the trees and didn't experience any movement, back to the skin track was shallow but no sluffing or movement.
Sorry no photos....too cold this morning
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>New snow bonded decently to the firm crust from the rain/freeze event at the end of last week. I isolated a few columns by hand and couldn't get the new snow to shear cleanly. There was some very minor cracking while skinning this morning but no huge shooting cracks. </p> <p>The weak faceted snow beneath the last two storm events still lurking deep in the snowpack. Not much to be said that hasn't been said already, don't mess with the dragon on big terrain. </p>