Quick report
- Red Flags
- Rapid Warming, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Did see rollerballs as the day heated up on the slopes facing the southern half of the compass. Was able to find a more shallow area in Silver fork where we were able to collapse and propagate the depth hoar. </p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>It's still there folks. The "monsters in the basement" continue to haunt us. Our depth hoar problem is slowly healing itself over time as the snowpack thickens. Having said that I believe you can still find shallow/thin areas in the snowpack where this depth hoar layer can still be triggered. This type of avalanche can fracture above you catching you off guard and if the consequences are high enough creating an unmanageable situation. I would still be weary of those big exposed slopes facing the north half of the compass.</p> <p>The south facing slopes heated up quickly today. There was not much wind circling around to counter act the suns radiation. </p>
Mixed bag of snow surface conditions today. Found the best turning conditions out of the wind exposed areas lower on the slope. Southern facing slopes seemed to be skiing well as the crust melted off around 11ish. Did note many wind/temperature crusts in the more exposed upper elevation regions on all aspects.
Bo and I dug two separate pits no more than 20 feet apart on the same aspect NE. We were quite a ways off the ridge tucked over a knoll that was open. Bo had 165 cm of snow with his CT producing no results. I was just up the slope and was also on a NE aspect that was only holding 95-100 cm of snow. I was first able to get the column to collapse, it then popped with a clean shear right at me on my 11 tap from my elbow CT11 Q1. I was also able to get my column on two separate ECT tests to fully propagate with a clean shear; again popping right out at me ECT22 Q1 and ECT29 Q1. I will note that it did take the hits from my shoulder to get the column to propagate but once I did collapse the weak layer the energy was HIGH. To me this shows that the depth hoar is still lingering...