Quick report
Quiet day with not much going on. The biggest hazard was poor visibility combined with chunky avalanche debris, rollerballs, or lots and lots of old tracks. Expected the snow surface to be more frozen, supportable, and make for junky skiing, but conditions were passable if you could find smooth, undisturbed snow and also see where you were going. The trace of wet new snow from early in the morning was not drifting with light southerly winds at Ptarmigan Pass, and doubt it was anywhere else. Possibly more active or recent loading at upper elevations.
None other than active rollerballs on steep northerly slopes that were warming for the first time with light greenhousing.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- Trace
- Snow Avail For Transport
- none
Low clouds with periods of minimal visibility. Greenhousing with mild temperatures and clouds down to ground level. South wind started to increase in the afternoon
Snowpack
Soft, dry snow surfaces were found on sheltered and shaded slopes above 5000 feet; everywhere else had wind affect or some amount of soft (generally not frozen) crust or slurpee-like snow at the surface. Generally good, progressive resistance from the surface down 30-50cm to K-hard Dec 24th crust. A slight density change and softer snow about 10cm above the crust. Testing yielded no results other than breaks at various storm layer interfaces. Wind-drifted features were completely unreactive when tested. HS at mid-elevations 200-300cm. The most notable snowpack observation was that only the top 5cm or so were melt-affected. From 5cm down to crust was still small, moist rounded grains.
Avalanche
A few debris piles from D1.5-2 wet loose or glide avalanches earlier in the week. Rollerballs everywhere, with some 4 feet tall.