Quick report
- Aspect
- North
- Red Flags
- Cracking, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Elevation
- 2835 m
- Slope Angle
- 18°
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Lots of audible collapses and cracking. Very poor snowpack structure.</p>
Low elevation terrain has very little to basically no snow. Mid elevations are thin and faceted top to bottom making travel tedious and harboring many hidden rocks, stumps and downed trees. Upper elevation terrain has around 3 feet of total snow, give or take a bit. Nice day of winter skiing and riding in the upper elevation terrain. Still lots of signs of a weak snowpack with lots of collapsing and cracking. ECT tests failed with medium effort and propagated a fracture across the column. These failed below a decomposing crust on 2mm facets about 64cms down (25"). Also getting mixed results on small grain facets about 30 cms down (13"). I have a low tolerance for risk based on our snowpack setup so I'm going to continue to avoid terrain 30° and steeper. If you're traveling in terrain steeper than 30° I feel there is a considerable avalanche danger.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>This is going to be our main problem for a while. We were easily getting large areas to collapse under the weight of a skier, from either walking or skiing. Some collapses you could feel the pack drop under your skis.</p>
About a foot of settled storm snow.