Observation: Hatcher Pass

Location: Hatch Peak, Northside, April bowl

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Started tour around 12:30PM, climbing up the valley then up to Hatch Peak (1st time in area). Walking up, there was variable 0-16 inches of snow on top of single finger snow (difficult to climb in places). Temperature started around -1C and dropped to -10C, calm wind at start and light breeze by end of day.

We dug a snow pit just below hatch peak on a North slope with 28 degrees steepness. Snow pit was dug to 1M, snowpack depth at snowpack was 2.5M. The snowpack consisted of fist hard snow (10cm-ish) on top of 1F cohesive slab, on top of a 5cm graupel layer, then 1F or pencil cohesive slab down to 35cm, where there was another 5cm graupel layer. From there to 1M bottom of pit, was P slab, digging paste about 40cm was difficult and required chipping snow. We did one ECT with a result of ECTNH@35CM down. Column under shovel failed on hard, then I tapped twice more, it propagated slightly more, but not energetic and less than 50% of column. Shearing the column off showed a Q3, rough bed surface. Given results showing hard trigger, little to no prop, and low shear/clip likelihood, we skied out the bowl over 3 runs, before ascending the summit before Hatcher Peak to take a run to the car.

Video of ECT at https://share.icloud.com/photos/0edP08-DhILeG6HCSUL5PF_fw

Red Flags
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Observer Comments

Saw some old wet loose slough on south slopes, unlikely from today

Weather & Snow Characteristics
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Snowpack

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Photos & Video
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