Winds transporting snow on the high elevation peaks.
Observation: Girdwood
Location: Upper Girdwood Valley, Goat Mtn area
A few photos of the active north winds and a few wind slab avalanches, possibly releasing Wednesday Jan 8.
Observer Comments
Weather
Sunny and cold! Minus single digits. Breezy north winds, plumes along ridgelines.
Snow surface
Very loose faceting surface to our high point at 3,100'. There is slight wind skin on the surface and some harder wind crust in exposed areas.
Surface hoar exists below 2,000' but not evident above this.
Snowpack
Dug two quick pits to look at the top few feet of snow.
Pit #1: 2,400', W, snow depth 110cm
No tests performed, focused on surface layers for future concerns for next storm. The pack is rotting out with cold temps. There is a 'crumbly' 2-4cm crust ~25cm below the surface is very thin and degrading. Very weak facets exists both above and below the crust.
Pit #2: 3,100', W, snow depth 235cm
ECTP 27, twice, on a 1-2cm layer of 1mm faceted snow that sits 50cm (20") below the surface. The block was very planar and slid easily off the block.
The top 8" or so was very loose and faceted and transitioned quickly to 1 finger and pencil hard slab above the weak layer.
We could not find any buried surface hoar and did find a very thin crust just 10 cm (4") below the weak layer. No weakness was found around this old thin crust.
Two fresh looking wind slab pictured below on the Goat shoulder look to have released somewhat recently, possibly with the uptick in winds on Wednesday.
Wind transport along the high peaks - northwesterly winds.
Old avalanche on Goat shoulder on the left in the photo and two fresher wind slabs (likely from Jan 8th) in the middle and right of photo.
Raggedtop Mtn
Snow pit at 3,100'. A faceted weak layer was found 20" below the surface that took a bit of force to fail, but then propagated on a planar surface.
Pit from 2,400' to look at the weak and rotting snowpack.