Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Plenty of evidence of wind transport before I even got out of the car. As I traveled over to Edith Creek, found plenty more evidence with wind stiffened slopes and actively blowing wind. Visibility was fairly poor overall today, which limited my travel and ability to look around for recent avalanches.

Put a bunch of holes in the ground to check on our PWL issues. Found that there are still facets sandwiched above the 1/13 crust and a very thin crust in all locations I looked. The facets are healing but still showed some ability to fail in pit tests. Atop this thin crust I also found buried surface hoar in one of my pits, which failed more easily during compression tests. These layers are approximatley 60-80cm down from the surface and should be easily identifiable.

The 2/1 crust is a layer that we have recently become concerned with and was breaking easily in all of my pits. The failure did not propagate in extended column tests but was breaking easily and repeatably in compression tests. This layer is 30-40cm down from the surface and could be the initial point of failure for many avalanches this weekend. There are concerns that this layer could fail and then have avalanches step down to the 1/13 interface mentioned above, creating large to very large avalanches.

Above the 2/1 crust, there are multiple sensitive density changes as we often find in the PNW, none of which should linger much past this weekend's stormy weather.