Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Toured up Red Mountain and found an extremely icy snowpack in the trees. At roughly 4k' we climbed through sun crusted snow and some refrozen avy debris to the SW slopes of Red. Dug a pit at 5100' on a W facing slope just above treeline. HS 235. Had a mild windcrust on the surface covering 20 cm of soft and unconsolidated fist hard layer that we suspect was wind deposited. Beneath that, we found 70 cm of right side up snow down 4f to 1f to the ice layer. The ice layer was 15 cm of fully saturated pencil-hard ice above another 15 cm of saturated rounding snow. Beneath that was consolidated 1f snow.

Performed an ECT and got an ECTN3 break at the top 20 cm interface which broke cleanly but didn't propagate and another at ECTN13 slightly deeper.

Performed a PST on the ice layer (our CT broke and slid there at CT20) and as far as we could tell, it never propagated.

Continued up to the summit and got some good turns through slightly windstiffened snow. Saw no instability. The ice crust was only a few inches deep on the upper mountain and some additional traction could have been helpful.

Once we were back to the Commonwealth luge track, a quick exit!