Toured up Magnum to see how much snow fell and how this, along with the warm up
from the past 24 hours, has affected the pack.
Weather:
Very pleasant day. Temps in the upper 20’s, light southerly breeze on ridgeline
otherwise calm and scattered clouds.
New snow from overnight: 1″ at the road, 3″ at 3,500′
Signs of instability:
Recent Avalanches – Small to medium cornice failures from the new snow and
strong wind overnight (see photos).
Collapsing – Yes. We had several small collapses in the alders with one nerve
racking collapse on the Magnum Ridgeline.
Cracking- No
Surface conditions:
The strong wind that came in with the 1-3″ of new snow last night seemed to
affect mainly ridgelines, exposed rollovers and shoulders. Dense soft snow otherwise.
Snowpack:
The small amount of new snow seemed to stick rather well to the existing snow
cover – even in areas with wind loading.
Below treeline the snow was so unsupportable and sugary we could not get any
test results (lacked a slab).
Above treeline we found a slab weak layer combo (no surprise…) with tests
results of ECTP 14,19 and 22. These all surrounded the Dec drizzle crust (photo)
14″ deep. This says the slab still has the propensity to propagate but takes
moderate to strong force to get it to do so. We did not get failures below this.
Observed hazard:
Moderate
A great cross-section of the top 2 feet of our snowpack. You can clearly see the weak (light colored) snow before the Dec drizzle crust.
Cornice failures on SW facing Magnum. These only triggered some minor sluffing.
Beautiful day to be out along with a few more minutes of sunshine!
Moderate wind effect below ridgelines - another picture of PMS Bowl and its cornice breaks