Public Field Report

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Toured up to the top of butterfield today and skied back down the low angle ridge. The wind from the past few days put in some serious work on exposed ridge lines - lots of big drifts and dense slabs. Thin surface crust up to about 8500 feet or so. We got lots of collapsing and cracking while we were on our way up, which was mostly confined to wind loaded slopes but also on some non wind affected slopes. Dug a snow pit at 8900 feet on a southeast aspect just out of curiosity, which yielded an ECTN 14 on the rather spooky weak layer down 30cm. PST yielded a result of 30/100 with a full propagation to the end of the block. On sheltered aspects without the surface crust, the skiing was actually pretty good. We made the initial plan to avoid all avalanche terrain given recent avalanche activity, weird weather patterns, and prior knowledge of the poor snowpack structure. Our observations confirmed this initial plan.