Observation: NWAC Forecaster

Advanced Information

Weather Summary

It was mostly a soggy day at Kendall. Although it was snowing most of the day, lower elevations more closely resembled "snain" at times while mid-elevations had big wet flakes. We had one or two brief breaks in the clouds where a patch of blue sky was spotted.

Avalanche Observation Comments:

Observed a few natural loose avalanches during a brief period of visibility. Snow was easily pushed on a test slope and entraining almost down to the Early March Crust. On a steeper and bigger slope, it may have made it. If you weren't on something steep, the snow was difficult to get moving. However, once a slide got moving, it probably wouldn't stop easily.

Snowpack Observations

We traveled up Kendall Trees to the top of the slidepath. There was minimal new snow down low and in the trees. Not really enough to create an avalanche hazard, but you could push some snow on steeper slopes and maybe get caught off guard and slip into an open creek. As we ascended, the snow got progressively deeper and at the top of the trees, we dug a pit. We found about a foot of new snow and that the Early March Crust was down about 16". The new snow had a density break about 5-6" below the surface, which was resulting in "upside-down" heavy over weak snow. This interface repeatably showed up in small column tests as progressive failures. It was also easy to spot with hand pits. Our compression tests also highlighted failures just above the Early March Crust. Although we had some sudden collapses, we did not find the facets that we have been tracking, but rather some weaker large polycrystals. An extended column test produced failures at both of the interfaces highlighted above but neither propagated across the block.

Jumping on test slopes during our descent, we found that steeper slopes were needed to get the snow moving. Once we found the right pitch, the snow was touchy and easily failing at our ski tips. The snow was gauging down but did not quite reach the Early March Crust. Our feeling was that in bigger terrain, it could make it there and run far distances on the firm crust.