Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

We toured up Whitepine to the bowl beneath the NW face of Big Chiwaukum with intentions of skiing the NW Couloir. The entire bowl beneath the face appeared to be pretty wind effected. We dug a pit and found 50cm of compacted snow on top of a rain crust. The snow was uniform in thickness and bonded very well to the rain crust. We performed a CT and got no results. It was even difficult to break off the top 50cm layer with our hands behind the column. We continued up to the couloir. It appears the couloir slid previously on a thin wind slab. The bed surface made for relatively easy booting and quite good skiing. Winds were light all day and a cloud deck below 6k.