Observation: Chugach State Park

Toured up falls creek on Saturday. Saw an impressive amount of wind transport in the first couple hours of the morning- tons of ridge top flagging and really reactive wind slabs in the (flat) valley bottom – shooting cracks etc. Continued up the valley toward South heavens breath and winds stopped. Weirdly at higher elevations (or out of the valley funnel) we encountered no more red flags – wind effect was present but slabs were soft and not reactive.

Most notably there was inconsistent graupel present throughout the zone which really seemed to contribute to isolated areas of instability. On one north facing aspect we literally found ourselves in 1 FOOT deep (or more!) of graupel that had either shed down the chute above us or been blown there? In this isolated spot it was an impressive amount of graupel. Graupelly.

By the afternoon the reactive wind affected snow in the lower valley from the morning had turned to hot pow in the sun.

4-6” of new snow in this zone – with quite a bit of different stuff going on in general. Most all slopes had at least some wind texture and I expect by tomorrow a lot will have sun crusts.