Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Circumnavigated Chair Peak today, and found challenging travel conditions and evidence of large avalanches (crowns and debris everywhere) on all aspects and elevations (likely occured on Tuesday during the warmup and rain).

The large avalanche debris has frozen solid into a sort of dip-n-dots structure, and is extremely difficult to get through. We spent much of our day skiing down avy bed surfaces, trying to get through or around debris, or sliding around on heavily crusted slopes (ski supportive, boot penetration up to thigh deep in places). Ski crampons were essential, but we also definitely did some unpleasant post-holing.

South facing slopes warmed up in the midday sun, and became somewhat skiiable, but every other aspect was generally a sheet of crust. The constant breeze and high level cloud cover kept conditions pretty cool (below the forecast warmup).

We found no evidence of windslab on our route, and found almost no unfrozen snow the entire day. We also never got above the rain crust (got up to 5400') and could see rain runnels up on the snow near the summit of Chair, which suggests that the rain fell at least that high.

The biggest avalanches we found were a D3 avalanche on the north side of Melakwa Pass that had at least an 18" crown, and an incredibly large debris path coming down from the Thumbtack area all the way down to Source Lake.