Public Field Report

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Skied copper mountain yesterday, and dug a pit up on the main face on the lower skier's right side https://snowpilot.org/node/47273. After I put it into snowpilot and looked at it, I wonder if I missed some small layer where the problematic layer is labeled, seems odd to have it increase then decrease in hardness. There was evidence of moderate cross-loading; the west part of the face was obviously loading and the east side was getting stripped back to inverted ski tracks and sastrugi. After digging and looking around we elected to bail down into the lower trees that would be more protected from the wind. Ended up skiing one of the treed west ridges coming off of the main accent ridge. Dug a real quick pit it was roughly 130cm deep, facets at the bottom up to about 30, then about 1F rounds up to around 90, had some frozen ice balls here that had come off the trees last weekend with the warm weather, some small facets around these and then new precip to the top. Got CT19 Q3 on the frozen ice ball layer and ECTN26 on the same layer so we skied the trees. Watched numerous other parties go ski the loaded portion of the upper main face.