Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

We did a mellow day of touring at Blewett's Pass today. The sky was scattered to broken throughout the day and there was no precipitation. The wind was only noted atop the ridge which was a SW and light-borderline moderate. The air temperature was approximately 19 degrees F. We did experience whumpfing in various locations as we traveled, but saw no signs of overt avalanche activity. We toured to the top of Windy Knob where we dropped a small cornice upon the leeward north-facing slope resulting with only a slight augmentation of loose snow. We skied down NE until we conducted a quick evaluation of the slope at 5850 ft. Although the average angle of the slope was ~30 degrees and generally NE facing, we safely lowered to a micro terrain variation that was east-facing with a slope angle measuring 39 degrees, and conducted our testing here. Here the HS was 100cm, and Boot Pen also measured 100cm as we easily penetrated the snow all the way to the ground. The first 20 cm of snow was F hard while the next 25 cm was 4F+. This sat upon the crust that was measured at 45 cm deep at this location. We conducted a CT, ECT, and PST at this site. With all the recently reported avalanche activity on similar aspects, and the variation of the aforementioned snowpack/testing site, we were surprised the following results weren't more ominous. However, these are the results we found at this location.

CT: CT14 @ 45 cm; Test depth 100cm - Resistant Planar
ECT: ECTN19 @ 45 cm
PST: 60/100 (End) down 45 cm

I should have taken some pictures, and will try to do so the next time I submit an ob.