Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Ascended from 2500’ to 3800’ on a southern aspect and descended a north aspect. There was anywhere from 3-5” of snow above the Christmas crust on solar aspects and 8”-12” above the Christmas crust on northerlies. The snow was wet from the parking lot to nearly 3200’ where it transitioned to medium dense snow. We didn’t see any wind textures on ridges or fresh cornices on these below treeline ridge lines, and winds were very light for the whole time out. Hasty pits on a north aspect revealed a small slab of dense new snow sitting on top of Thursday’s fresh. We got resistant planar results from hand shears at the interface but overall the new snow seemed pretty glued down to old snow on north aspects around 3200’. We didn’t get any notable results when jumping on steep road cuts and small test slopes. We didn’t see any recent activity other than extremely small wet loose slides on road cuts later in the day at lower elevations. Lower angled terrain (25-30 degrees) skied better than steeper terrain due to the Christmas crust.