Rock Creek

Went up Rock Creek with the goal of assessing the weak layers in the snowpack, and hopefully get some good turns. We succeeded in finding both! As soon as we left rock creek road and into the powder we heard whumpfing and felt quite a few collapses throughout the tour. We also traveled across some cross-loaded slopes and we got some small cracking, I was even able to initiate some bigger cracks and minor sliding after jumping on these small wind deposits (see pic). These were small as we were low and protected by trees from above, but I’m sure this problem is bigger and badder the higher and more exposed you are. I was really keen on seeing the state of the snowpack below the rain crust, so we dug a pit at 9800’. - HS 75cm, E aspect, slope angle was 30. With 0cm at ground… - Most recent storm snow layer was fist hard and 75-62cm - 62-47cm was 4F hard precip. particles from the previous storm. - Below this was a conglomeration of pencil hard rain crust from 47-40 cm. - Then a solid knife hard rain crust 40-39cm - Below the big rain crust was 2mm 4F hard faceting grains from 39-25cm - and finally was fist hard 3mm depth hoar 25-ground Got some results on both CT and ECT tests, but ultimately could not get anything to react on the rain crust layer. Most reactivity was in the upper snowpack at the most recent snow to older snow boundary (for us this was 62cm). See results. CT3 at 62cm CT14 at 47cm Both of these were sudden collapses. On to the ECT and we got no propagation. ECTN 2 at 62cm I pulled off the top layers and tried for some deep tap tests but still had a hard time getting anything to initiate at that crust/facet layer. This told us that things might be hard to trigger but those things will run big if they do step down…. spooky!! Anyways the riding was great and super fun, though the touring up and sliding on the rain crust got a bit frustrating.

Quick report