Observation: Avalanche Professional

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Weather Summary

Cold today in the teens. Mostly overcast with the occasional broken sky and sun breaks. Very little wind affect today and S-1 most of the day.

Avalanche Observation Comments:

No new avalanches in the forecast region

Snowpack Observations

Cold temps today in the teens. We observed supportive travel with 25cm ski penn with little wind effect to the surface snow at all elevations. Low coverage still persists below 5500ft. We dug two test pits in a NW facing bowl: at 5900ft and 7390ft. Both pit locations resulted in sudden collapses on the knife-hard Dec 2nd rain-crust. Small .75-1.0mm faceted crystals were observed just above this crust. We also performed a large column test (ECT). The Dec 2nd crust-interface in question did propagate across the column with a moderate load. This layer was otherwise rather stubborn and did not yield other signs of instability, such as collapsing while traveling, natural or ski triggered avalanches. -Mark Allen

Avalanche Problems

Mostly dry Loose potential in steep terrain & a lurking weak layer above the Dec 2nd crust 40-95cm down.