We were easily getting dry loose avalanches to release on all aspects. We were only playing around in small terrain, but anything that was steep enough to slide was moving. The new snow was not showing any signs of behaving like a slab yet.
Observation: Turnagain
Location: Eddie's
We toured up to treeline on Eddie’s to check out storm totals and look at the 3/14 layer. There was about 8″ low-density snow on the surface by this afternoon, making for fast-running sluffs on steep test slopes. The 3/14 layer was about 5′ deep and showing encouraging signs of gaining strength in our two pits on NW and NE aspects at about 1800′. We dug close to a natural avalanche that occurred back on 3/23.
Observer Comments
Weather
It snowed about 4" in the parking lot while we were out. Winds were howling out of the west along the Turnagain Arm on our drive up, but were calm while we were skiing.
Snow surface
4-8" very low density snow on top of firm surfaces.
Snowpack
See attached photos and video for detailed snowpack info.
The key points from our pits were: (1) that the new snow was super low density and very poorly bonded to the old snow, and (2) the 3/14 weak layer was buired about 5 feet deep and showing good signs of gaining strength. It was harder than we were previously seeing in snowpits (1F- hand hardness), and the grains were obviously rounding with improved bonding when we looked at them under a field scope. These are the things we like to see! This was just info from two pits, so it's still a layer we are treating with caution for now given all of the avalanches we've seen on it.
This was one of the better periods of visibility while we were out. Photo taken around 11:30 a.m. 04.09.2023
Debris from small dry loose avalanches on a little test slope. 04.09.2023
Key features of the snowpack. 04.09.2023
Snowpit profile from one of our pits. The structure in the other pit had all of the same features. 04.09.2023