Observation: Public

Observation Details

Observed Avalanches

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Beautiful day for a quick walk before forecasting. Had a quick chat with the Alp patrollers this morning and found that not all of their climax slopes had yet slid, so they were keeping Glide slopes in mind for the day. Plenty of Glide cracks observed while driving and walking around the pass. Also observed more crowns than I could count as I looked around with binoculars. 

As I traveled up in elevation, found that the semi-supportable crust down low became more supportable, particularly as I approached around 4000'. There's about 8cm of low-density snow, including graupel, overlaying the crust, which I found to be about 15 cm thick on average. Average HS around 4300' is ~275cm. 

Wasn't able to get a good feel for where the rain/snow line is. Looking around the pass with binoculars was able to spot rain rills up to ridgeline on almost every mountain I could see. Also could see some plumes of blowing snow, meaning the mostly calm wind was moving around that 8 cm. Didn't encounter any wind drifted snow myself, but steeper slopes could have produced some dry loose avalanches if that low-density snow ran on the crust. Trees were dripping whatever snow they had left in them due to sunshine as I made my way back to the car around noon. Continued sunshine in the afternoon could have produced some rollerballing and maybe a small Wet Loose, but seemed like the cool East breeze was helping to keep those at bay.