| Recent Avalanches? | Yes |
| Collapsing (Whumphing)? | No |
| Cracking (Shooting cracks)? | No |
Observation: Turnagain
Location: Tincan Common
Hiked up to about 1600′ then put my skis on and toured up to Tincan Common. Where I put my skis on there was about 6″ of snow with an icy crust on the surface. At my high point around 3200′ there was roughly 3′ of snow on the ground with a breakable sun crust on the surface. Most of the snow is from the storm this past weekend, other than a thin layer about 6″ deep at the base. There were tons of glide avalanches and glide cracks all over the place in Turnagain Pass.
Obvious signs of instability
Observer Comments
Lots of glide avalanche releases all over the place. Some of them were quite large, sending debris running onto the slopes below.
Weather
Cold and clear overnight. Calm winds and blue skies throughout the day. Some small cloud layers forming along Seattle Ridge in the afternoon.
Snow surface
Melt freeze crust in the morning. Snow temperatures were heating up quickly on sunny slopes. The solar input this time of year is roughly similar to early March.
Above 2800' the melt freeze crust was no longer supportable and there was dry decomposing new snow underneath the crust.
Snowpack
I dug a quick pit between Tincan Common and Hippie Bowl at about 3100' on a SW aspect. The snowpack was about 3' deep with most of that snow coming from the storm last weekend. All of the new snow was very right side up, with a 2-3" breakable sun crust on top. At the base of the snowpack there was an older snow layer about 6" deep with a 0.5" thick ice crust on top. I didn't see any signs of faceting in the basal layer. No results in my extended column test.
Recent small glide avalanches on Seattle Rigdge.
About 500' of hiking to get to snowline.
Lots of recent avalanches on the N side of Sunburst, already filling up gully's with debris.
Melt water patterns on the snow surface from the warm sun and temps melting the upper layers of new snow.
It looks quite wintery on the big peaks further back from Tincan.
Glide release with debris on the slopes below under CFR on Tincan.
Glides galore! Everything steeper than 30 degree with tundra underneath has glide cracks opening up.
Close up of a large glide crack in Tincan Common.
Very interesting wrinkly snow texture at the base of the glide crack where to snow is under compression.
Big roller balls in Hippie bowl.
Large glide releases on S face of Eddies, just below the headwall.
The local ptarmigan nailed it on their camo.