Observation: Chugach State Park

Location: Peak 4

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

Standard up track to Peak 4 to look at the snowpack at alpine start zones and higher elevations (and to enjoy 12″ of new low-density snow).

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

10:00 am, clear skies, no wind, no precip
11:00 am, clear skies, light wind, no precip
1:00 pm, building low-lying clouds, light wind, no precip
2:30 pm, more building low-lying clouds, no wind, no precip

Snow surface

Light, low-density fresh snow over 12" deep for the majority of our tour.

The snow depth still varied a lot from 1' of fresh snow to over 8 feet deep of wind-deposited snow drifts. I did find a rock shark on our descent, so be careful of those.

Snowpack

We dug a pit in a wind-protected pocket along the ridgeline near the summit of Peak 4. We found over 12" of new snow on top of roughly a half foot of facets. We did not find a clearly defined crust layer at our pit location.

Location: Peak 4, ridgeline
Elevation: 4,000'
Aspect: South
Slope: 29 degrees
Tests: We did two ECT tests and got ECTX on both tests. We did not observe propagation on our ECT test.

Photos & Video
Please upload photos below. Maximum of 5 megabytes per image. Click here for help on resizing images. If you are having trouble uploading please email images separately to staff.