Observation: Hatcher Pass

Location: Eldorado

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Toured up Eldorado Bowl to assess how the cold weather is affecting snow surface/ski quality and look for buried near surface facets.

Red Flags
Red flags are simple visual clues that are a sign of potential avalanche danger. Please record any sign of red flags below.
Observer Comments

No collapsing or cracking.

Weather & Snow Characteristics
Please provide details to help us determine the weather and snowpack during the time this observation took place.
Weather

Cold! Sunny and calm but cold at Independence and colder at Gold Mint.

Snow surface

The snow surface is still stiff from the warm wet storm Thursday. The upper ~2-3 inches is an occasionally supportable board. Also extremely "slow" snow - glide is hard to come by. Snow feels slabby when stepping onto thicker wind affected areas.

Snowpack

The near surface faceting observed on Wednesday (2/22) was hard to find. We found a few facets and a couple pieces of graupel intermixed with decomposing snow but not an identifiable band. We did not have any propagation in our pit (ECTN 11) on the new/old interface.

Photos & Video
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