Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>We did not see any natural or skier triggered avalanches along Cutler or along the Ben Lomond-Willard headwall. Perhaps they had run and re-loaded by the relentless winds.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Wind slabs were the main concern but this observation is mostly a "non-event" report. Drifting occurred back and forth across subridges with wind whales everywhere. We jumped on many soft and hard drifts and ski cut across many many test slopes with no action - not even any shooting cracks, much less cracking. Some spots felt hollow in nature but remained welded in. Certainly warmth played a role in rapid settlement and sintering. </p> <p>Undoubtedly cornice fall would be on the radar with the winds and warm temperatures as would - possibly - wet pushalanches down low on Monday ahead of the cold front. </p>
Travel was up the Cutler ridge, north to check out some heat vents I had been unaware of and then to just below the 'step-across' at 8300' or so.
Difficult to tell how much "new" snow as nearly every square inch of the terrain was either scoured or drifted, with the most significant drifting noted at 7000' and above.