| Recent Avalanches? | Yes |
| Collapsing (Whumphing)? | No |
| Cracking (Shooting cracks)? | No |
Observation: Portage / Placer
Location: Squirrel flats
Placer River valley to common squirrel uptrack (north). Overnight at Spencer Bench Cabin.
Obvious signs of instability
Observer Comments
Extreme wet loose on south aspects Wednesday evening under bright sun. Several large older crowns/ debris piles from last week that have been blown in and snowed over.
One large cornice fall/ slab seen from the Placer parking lot, up the Skookum Valley (lookers right).
Weather
Warm, Sunny and calm winds on Wednesday night. Woke up to greybird and light winds Thursday morning at the Cabin. Winds increased with elevation as we made our way out.
Snow surface
Supportable crust up to ~800’. Breakable crust up to ~2K. We found cold, dry snow above 2K in the shade. Anything solar was softening up real nice Wednesday evening but breakable crust by the morning.
Surface hoar and near surface facets on shady aspects above about 2500’. Quite large at our pit location at 3800’.
Snowpack
This last week plus of storm snow is settling into a 1F slab. We did see 2 layers of BSH in our pit wall, but they were hard to pick out of what’s a very homogenous slab.
ECTN18,23 on 3/23 BSH. HS > 400cm.
Wet loose on solar aspects.
6-8mm surface hoar at 3800’. NW aspect below Comet Peak.
Spencer Bench Cabin was just about fully buried!
Rain tunnels and old debris in the Squirrel up track.
Rain runnels in the Placer Valley bottom.