Bishop Creek

Wet snow instabilities were obvious today in Bishop Creek, especially on northerly slopes where we triggered roller balls and some wet loose avalanches. 

New snow tonight and tomorrow will largely fall onto melt-freeze crusts if precipitation starts after today's wet surface re-freezes. In isolated areas, though, it will come to rest atop near-surface facets.

 

Rollerballs and small wet loose avalanches were easy to trigger in the afternoon. Northerly slopes were most reactive for wet instabilities today.

East, south, and west slopes were further along in the melt-freeze cycle than northerly slopes today. We were unable to find signs of instability on those aspects midday. There were a few inches of wet snow on top of supportable melt-freeze crusts. South aspects were mostly melted out. Southwest-facing fetches had a few inches of wet snow interspersed with rocks thanks to a season's worth of wind stripping. 

Northerly slopes below 10200 ft. had a thin, breakable melt-freeze crust over 20-25 cm of dry faceting snow over another thicker melt-freeze crust in the morning. This setup is what finally transitioned to wet snow and gave us wet loose avalanche results in the afternoon.

Isolated steep, northerly slopes above 10200 ft. that are sheltered from the wind and most intense daily sunshine had facets at the surface. We dug on one of these slopes to look for any instability in the upper snowpack. We found cold dry winter snow with a layer of preserved snowflakes showing some propensity to initiate fractures above a wind board that was buried in late March. The only facets we found were at the surface.