Observation: NWAC Forecaster

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Weather Summary

Beautiful blue skies and calm in the morning. A little breezy on ridgelines in the afternoon with some high clouds.

Avalanche Observation Comments:

Recent Wet Loose activity was observed on slopes that see direct sunshine. Rollerballs, pinwheels, small Wet Loose avalanches. Some activity was from 2/10 with more today. Also noted there were a few older slabs that had been filled/drifted in, likely from the cycle earlier this week.

Snowpack Observations

Took advantage of the nice weather today and traveled up East Peak down into Cement, over to Lakes Basin, and then up the ridgeline between Big Crow and Lakes Basins, grabbing. I dug once in the bottom of Cement (E 6000') and again in Big Crow Basin (N 6400'). A generally strong and right-side-up snowpack exists over the 2/3 interface. Although I was able to find some storm instabilities here and there that were failing hard in small column tests, none of them appeared to be of much concern. On top of the 2/3 interface in Big Crow Basin, there was some rotten snow, but it did not fail during snowpack tests. There were close to 30 skiers testing the upper snowpack on steeper features in Lakes Basin and I did not notice any red flag signs of instability or triggered avalanches. Northerly shaded aspects held cold dry snow while sunnier slopes warmed up and got heavy and sticky.

In the afternoon on my ascent toward Norse Peak, the wind picked up and was moving some snow and I even found a few sensitive pockets of Wind Slab. They cracked and failed easily but were isolated to just off my ski tips. The ski down from Norse back to the car had a breakable sun crust in some areas and the heavy, sticky snow mentioned above in others. Rollerballs a plenty, but no actual wet avalanches.