Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

30-40 cm of new by morning left just enough snow to make getting the car out a challenge, so we diverted to touring the closed resorts. The upper 5-10cm were more cohesive than the fluff below.

Saw one D0.5 tree-triggered slide in the Hyak liftline. Steeper slopes were readily cut/sluffed down to the heavily-skied bed surface. Sluffs required some attention. Steeper rolls exhibited some slabbiness in the aforementioned upper fraction of the new snow. Ski quality was quite good, especially in the morning.

Snow continued at moderate rates, with breaks for clearing in the afternoon. Winds kicked up sharply for a bit at 1:10 pm, beginning to knock sizeable tree-bombs from the flora. Some of the tree-bomb craters were about as big as I've seen. Showers resumed around 2, with yet more finer-grained (1-2mm) graupel, turning to flakes at 4pm.

Returning to the cleared car, we found that another ~10cm had fallen, bringing the storm-total to around 45-50cm by 4pm.

The sunbreaks gave the opportunity to make images throughout the pass. There were fewer natural slides than I'd expected. Most of those that were evident seemed to have a tree/rock trigger.

As photo-captions are under repair, they are reproduced here:

1. A small, ragged slab pulled out in the s-facing convexity along the ridge between Kendall and Kendall Stump. I don't ski it often -- that's why :). Some of the other regular natural-slide locales don't seem to show crowns.

2. Small slabs on the south-facing gully that descends from near Kendall Knob (not the Stump, the other one, further south) to Gold Creek.

3. A few small mid-storm slides on Chikamin.

4. Wind features, but no obvious crowns, on Granite.

Images CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0.