Observation: Portage / Placer

We rode the Placer area today, spending most of the day working hard to get above the rain crust from the Christmas storm. We found a stout (3″ thick) crust up to around 2000′ elevation, and saw evidence of a very widespread storm avalanche cycle from over the weekend. This included multiple avalanches that were D3-3.5, but as far as we could tell they were all storm slab avalanches.

We didn’t dig any pits today, but I stuck a probe in the snow at about 2700′ elevation and felt the Thanksgiving crust buried over 3 meters (10 feet) deep. As far as we could tell none of the avalanche activity we saw failed on that layer.