Observation: Turnagain

Location: Lynx Creek

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Snow machined up Lynx Creek to back of Valley. About 6-8 inches of settled snow from the March 19th storm. Dozens of natural loose snow avalanches on all aspects and a few small skier triggered stuffs. No recent slab avalanches seen in Lynx Creek. Stability was good and new snow appears to be bonding well to old surfaces. Several small older wet loose on steep SE aspects. New surface hoar (4-6mm) range was seen at all evolution, but was not observed on Southerly aspects due to sun melting surface snow. Several glide cracks are opening up on SE aspects of Lynx Cr.

Red Flags
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Observer Comments

None were observed

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

Clear and sunny
Temps 15-30F
Winds were calm

Snow surface

Surface hoar was present at all elevations, except for Southerly aspects with sun crust
6-7" of settled loose unconsolidated snow from March 19th storm

Snowpack

The 6-7" of settled snow was sitting a variable old surfaces (facets, breakable and supportable wind boards, sastrugi, and thin sun crust on steep SE aspects. Skinned up an East aspect to 3500' and was surprised by how thin it was. Depths ranged from 80cm to 160cm. Found lots of places where ski poles pushed into old faceted snow deeper in the pack.

Pit at 2500', East aspect, HS = 122cm, 36 degree slope. The most notable thing was the very loose faceted snow that composed most of this pit. The snow hardness varied from 4 Finger near the ground to Fist 1/2 way up. The new snow on surface was also very loose and was sitting on a very light old sun crust. See video and photo diagram below for more details. Although we did get easy to moderate results in our compression tests on old faceted layers, the slab was mostly falling apart in these tests.

Photos & Video
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