Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Today we traveled into the Illabot Peaks area accessed from Illabot Creek Rd. We skinned up a road for 2-3 miles before moving up a small nose ridge to a saddle. There was about 6 or so inches of soft dry snow on top of the rain crust which made for much improved travel and skiing. We dug a pit at 4200 feet on a 25 degree NW aspect slope. We performed a compression test and did not get any collapsing within the column. Snow depth was 230 cm. Throughout the day we noticed that the new snow easily sloughed off the icy crust, but we stuck to mellow terrain so didn’t notice any significant problems with the sloughing.

We observed some wind loaded features but did not get any reactivity with tests. We skied a protected 25-30 degree east facing slope and the snow was excellent!!