Observation: Public

Observation Details

Observed Avalanches

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

We toured up to Pineapple Pass this morning/early afternoon and observed 6-8” of heavy new snow sitting over a stout crust, with the snow getting colder and less water heavy as we got above 4000’.

We stopped at 4400’ where Cowboy Ridge and the start of Big Trees meet and dug a pit on a roughly 30° roller on a NNE aspect. We observed right side up snow all the way down to the MLK crust at 80cm with two prominent crusts, the first at 25cm below the surface and the second at 40cm below (isolated in photo). We performed two compression tests, the first exhibited a Q1 shear at CTE6 and failed directly underneath the crust 25cm below the surface. The full block easily slid by hand after failure, though it was not bonded strongly enough to be lifted off as a single block.

The second CT showed a very similar failure at the same layer (CTE5), after which we continued the compression test to investigate deeper layers and experienced a second Q2 shear at CTH23 on the 40cm crust layer.

We did not observe any skier triggered issues on either of these layers but did observe a lot of pinwheels and small natural wet loose slides as we skied out of the lower part of Pineapple Pass and Big Trees.