| Recent Avalanches? | No |
| Collapsing (Whumphing)? | No |
| Cracking (Shooting cracks)? | Yes |
Observation: Chugach State Park
Location: Little O’Malley
Today’s ski mission was to approach little O’Malley on lookers right and ski the gully down. We observed varying snowpack conditions from bare tundra to a couple feet deep within a few steps from all the wind deposits and snow drifts from recent storms. Strong winds had us concerned about wind slab instability.
At higher elevations just under 3,000’ we could see thin shooting cracks in the top 4” wind swept layer.
Obvious signs of instability
Observer Comments
We observed shooting cracks just under 3,000’, which propagated in the wind loaded top layer. Strong wind gusts from the east deposited snow and created snow drift walls that were hard to navigate with low vis.
Weather
Temperature: 15 degrees
Snow: Lightly snowing
Wind: Extremely strong wind gusts
Snow surface
Wind loaded with pockets of soft snow.
Snowpack
We dug a pit on the southern aspect of little O’Malley looker’s right of the gully on a 29 degree slope at about 2,900’. We observed an ECPT11 hitting failure 12” down.
The pit demonstrated our observations of low angle wind slab instability with a prominent 4” wind loaded layer and a deeper 12” layer where the ECT test failed. We saw varying snow densities including lighter wind loaded layers on top meeting fist pressure and under the 12” slab layer it was meeting pencil pressures. The thin failure layer met four finger pressure before hitting harder snowpack.
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