| Trigger | Natural | Remote Trigger | 0 |
| Avalanche Type | Wet Loose Snow | Aspect | South Southwest |
| Elevation | 3200ft | Slope Angle | unknown |
| Crown Depth | unknown | Width | unknown |
| Vertical Run | unknown |
Avalanche: Turnagain
Location: Pete's South
APU Snow Science 1 field day to gather snow observations about the reactivity of the persistent weak layers as well as to collect snowpack depth measurements for Community Snow Observations/Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. Toured up to 2300′ on Pete’s South.
Avalanche Details
Only one recent loose D1 avalanche observed initiated on ridgetop rocks along Pete's North ridgeline.
Observer Comments
None observed.
Weather
Sunshine! Pleasant temperatures. Calm to light winds. No new precipitation.
Snow surface
Dust on crust to breakable crust to quite hard slippery surface at the elevations above 2000'.
Some sastrugi above 2200'.
Maybe some NSF or surface hoar growth in places.
Southerly slopes were warming up when we were heading down ~3pm.
Ski quality was not as poor as we were anticipating. Nice supportable turns were to be had above treeline. Travel through the alders and forest was not ideal.
Snowpack
We did not get the persistent weak layers to react on our locations. 8xCTN, 6xECTX. After standard test procedure, additional force made some tests pop at the layer of 1mm facets ~55cm from the surface. Propagation test result on this layer was PST 50/100cm End. PWL is there but it is seemingly sluggish to react.
We collected HS data throughout our travel, these data points are posted on Mountainhub. DGGS was flying a LIDAR for snowpack observations this week. Check out https://communitysnowobs.org/ to get involved with "ground truthing" the remote sensing data.
Numerous compression tests and extended column tests provided no results, but propagation saw test failed at 50 cm cut length (PST 50/100 End @ 55 cm down on 1-2 mm facets above the melt freeze crust.
Skinning was difficult due to breakable crust on top of pencil hard slippery slab. Ski crampons might be a good idea if heading to the alpine tomorrow.
Snowpack at 2300' had 60cm pencil hard slab on top of fist hard facets above meltfreeze crust sandwich. Structure is poor. We did not dig all the way to the ground.