Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

We toured and skied some north facing trees near the highway closure. Snow height was about 80cm down low around 2700’. Rimed surface hoar 2-6 mm is found on the surface. About 30cm of right side up snow sits on the Christmas crust. At 5600’ on a north facing aspect we dug to the ground to take a look. Snow height was 120cm. No results in an extended column test (ECTX). In a compression test we saw a sudden planar result just under the christma crust (CTM SP @ 35 cm). After the CT we just walloped on the remaining column and managed to get SP fractures on the 12/8 interface at the basal facets. These are not ‘real’ results, but interesting to see clean breaks down there. The bottom 30cm of the snowpack is 2-4mm basal facets with 4f- hardness. The snowpack above that is .5-1mm rounding facets with 1f hardness. So, still some less-dense large-grain sugary snow down against the ground. The no-result ect might suggest there isn’t much propensity for propagation where we were skiing.