Raggedtop - Crow Creek

Toured up towards Raggedtop with a few things on our minds. We wanted to see if a good overnight refreeze occurred, assess the melting of the snowpack contributing to the current wet snow avalanche hazards, and look for the layer of basal facets that have been found throughout the area. We found that there was a poor overnight refreeze, giving us just a thin surface crust that quickly melted out during the day due to warm temps and sun. Under the crust we found an actively melting upper snowpack losing strength and draining water to buried weak layers contributing to overall concerns of instability. We observed debris from three large wet loose avalanches in the Raggedtop bowl, one stepping down and ripping out a small slab avalanche. In two pits at 2900' we did not get concerning results from instability tests but did find concerning structure that was worsening from the hot day. Skiing was sticky and sloppy as the upper snowpack was mostly weak, wet snow. 

Very thin surface crust over wet snow during our whole tour gave us reason to believe there was not an adequate refreeze. This along with warm, sunny weather kept our mindset very conservative to avoid wet avalanche hazards. On easterly slopes at mid-day, the wet snow was very weak and caused us to dig deep into loose wet snow while skinning and skiing.

Several inches to about a foot of wet snow was capped by a thin and breakable crust that quickly melted during the day on solar aspects. On the northerly features we traveled on, the crust was still breakable and the underlying snow was moist rounds. The transition past corn conditions was fast and surface conditions were quickly wet sloppy snow. 

We dug two pits at 2900' on an east aspect. We found an overall weak snowpack with poor structure. The top foot of the snowpack showed evidence of melt water moving down and pooling on a weak layer of snow 1.5' deep. We also found a layer of large basal facets at the ground though instability tests did not produce concerning results.