Quick report
- Cracking
- widespread
Classic warm, stormy day up at Baker. Snowfall and wind loading built fresh slabs nearly everywhere, but they were pretty much all unreactive. Even on steep, unsupported terrain features. Warming and moist/wet snow at the beginning of snowfall likely had too much of an effect on the old snow surface. If it was colder and the snow level was 1000' lower, suspect fresh slabs would have been much more reactive. Could see more activity 2nd half of the day with additional snowfall.
Even with the observed danger of Moderate throughout the morning at mid-elevations, stormy conditions, poor visibility and signs of instability kept us off bigger slopes and traveling like it was Considerable. Only the top 500' of the low elevation band has enough snow to produce small wet avalanches around Heather Meadows.
Lots of localized cracking around skis from trailhead elevation up to 5000', but not much more than that. Test slopes produced no results and found only a few shooting cracks in the most wind-loaded terrain. Steep low-elevation terrain produced rollerballs and very small wet loose avalanches.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Rain Elevation
- 4000'
- Recent Snowfall
- 10cm
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Socked in and stormy. Winds were variable in direction and speed but mostly from the south, gusting to strong. Warm, but still snowing hard through the morning at and above Heather Meadows
Snowpack
10cm of most 1F new snow. Below that another 15-30 cm over the Early Feb Crust. Wind-loaded areas had drifts up to 60cm, but most wind slabs were 20-30cm thick. Ski pen was 0cm in some areas and +45cm in others.
Moist facets at the old/new interface produced lots of localized cracking below the new snow, but not reactive enough to propagate a fracture. Dense, sticky new snow up to 5100'.
Full pit to the ground on a NW aspect @ 4750'. HS 155cm. EFC was firm and frozen. Knife and pencil-hard melt forms all the way to the ground.