Observation: Public

Observation Details

Observed Avalanches

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Toured mostly low angle slopes below and near treeline from Narada Falls down the Tatoosh Creek drainage and up to the saddle on the SW ridge of Lane Peak. Was surprised by how little snow fell during the day and the nearly calm winds + near complete lack of evidence of previous wind transport in this area. Searching for the faceted weak layer above the 1/13 crust produced mixed results at the two locations observed, but not signs of instability associated with the layer throughout our tour.

On a very low angle (<5°) W-facing meadow at 4400' along Tatoosh Creek, there was a prominent faceted layer (~5cm) sitting on top of the 1/13 crust and below 3 other fairly significant crusts all within 12-15 cm of the 1/13 crust. Above those crusts, the more recent snow was right-side-up and unconsolidated.

A second quick pit revealed no faceted layer on a NW aspect at 5400' just below the saddle SW of Lane Peak. It did show a similar structure with multiple crusts within ~10-12cm of the 1/13 crust. Hand shears at this location consistently failed at the top-most crust on what appeared to be a very thin facet layer on the crust. Some failed planar on only that crust layer - others failed predominantly at that layer, but also at one of the other crusts just below.

Below treeline, low-snow hazards quickly became prominent with many open creeks, limited coverage, and a significant amount of relatively large, barely buried branches and other obstacles that appeared to be blown out of trees during the AR event and then buried by the recent snow. Below ~4400' these challenges were significant enough that we ended up booting a significant segment.