Observation: Hatcher Pass

Location: windloaded, low angle slopes below gold cord knoll and vertical 200' above the main cluster of mine buildings

Date:
Observer:
Route & General Observations

A group of 5 students and 1 instructor from a Custom Avy 1 course traveled up the access road adjacent to the groomed gold cord road to a 13degree, wind-loaded slope below the private land holding and gold cord knoll.

Weather & Snow Characteristics
Please provide details to help us determine the weather and snowpack during the time this observation took place.
Weather

We started at IM parking lot 25degree, calm, little to no wind, increasing around 3:30pm as it began to snow. From 4-5pm it began to snow rapidly accumulating while we dug the pit.

Snow surface

1"-2" Powdery snow on top of windblown, finger hard supportable crust. Was able to push the pole all the way through the top to ground, about 3+' down in our study area.

Snowpack

HS 120cm CT1 -22 - fracture character was Break (q3) 104cm from top 13degree slope
CT2 - no fracture
ECTX - no fracture

observed windblown layers within the snow pack. From the top 2" of powder that was fist hard, 2-3' down it was finger hard to 3-4' down it was pencil hard, then 5ish' down it was fist hard 3-4" to the ground with very well developed faceting. We couldn't get the weak layer to propagate on extended column test. However the block that we cut out was well consolidated, and held together very well as a 5' plus slab.