Observation: NWAC Forecaster

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Weather Summary

It was a beautiful, cold day with clearing skies and calm wind. The surface snow was an almost floating blanket of very low density, large and intricate stellars.

Avalanche Observation Comments:

By 11am, snow on steep SE aspects was beginning to change with the surprisingly strong, direct sun. We were able to easily cut small 'moist loose' slides from steep slopes, which gained speed and packed a solid punch as they ran with a combination of moist snow and dry snow on the recently buried suncrust. Another party triggered a couple similar loose slides on very steep features. Observed evidence of a widespread soft slab/loose cycle from the snowfall event on 12/30.

Snowpack Observations

The recently buried suncrust (12/29) was only found on very steep SSE-SSW slopes, and even then the crust was somewhat intermittent. We were able to identify small but sharp faceted grains above this crust, however. Hand shears would often pop off the very soft new snow cleanly on this layer.
On other aspects, the 12/29 interface was more difficult to make out due to the very soft nature of both layers, but we did find large stellars and feathery surface hoar on a N aspect at 5,600ft about 30cm down with delicate hand shears.
We found some windslab buried under the new snow on SW aspects, roughly 20cm thick of 1F hardness or so, but these were not showing potential to propagate.
On S aspect at 4,600ft the 12/21 crust was found down about 105cm and about 1cm in thickness. We observed faceting rounds above and below this crust, but they were more pronounced beneath it. Deep tap tests were failing beneath it as resistant planar. We couldn't get failure above the crust at this location.