Quick report
We began touring at about 8:45am from the Johnson Pass snowpark and headed up the ridge towards the peak of Talking Mountain. We dug two pits during our tour, the first at about 9:30am on a NNE aspect at an elevation of 7770 ft. The height of snow here was 108 cm. We found a fairly right side up snowpack with hand hardness progressing gradually from F hard in the first ~20 cm from the surface, to 4F, then 1F, then P. We found 2 raincrusts K hard present at the bottom of the snowpack in this location with about 4 cm of 1 - 2 mm rounding facets between them and a very thin layer (maybe 1 cm) between the last raincrust and the ground. It was difficult to determine hand hardness in these layers of rounding facets due to how thin they were but my guess would be about 1F. Our second pit was dug at roughly 12:30 pm on a NW aspect at an elevation of 8790 ft further up along the ridge, just about at the peak of Talking Mountain. We chose a wind affected area to get data on how reactive potential wind slabs would be. Here we found the height of snow to be 170 cm. Another right side up snow pack, albeit denser due to the wind loading, progressing from 1F hard to P down to the ground. We performed a CT at this pit and got a CT22 at 140 cm above the ground and CT29 127 cm above the round. Both breaks looked to have a shear quality of Q2/Q3 and I was admittedly hitting quite hard towards the end of the test in hopes to get some sort of result. It is worth noting that throughout the day we observed blowing snow coming off of Steven's Peak from the strong ridgetop E winds, seemingly sublimating. It is also worth noting that cornices on test slopes at about 8000' broke somewhat easily when kicked on but did not entrain any snow or trigger slides below. During and after descent I noticed widespread 3-5 mm surface hoar localized to about 50 - 100 ft in elevation above lake elevation.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 35
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts