During a full day of ski touring near Round Lake, we saw about 4" of new snow. Hard to tell though because the wind was really blowing snow around. I saw two small shallow wind slab avalanches but vis was poor.
Lots of wind transport filling in the skin track between laps and creating light reactive slabs ~5” deep in places (see photo) primarily out of the west but generally inconsistent in direction. Photo: E Kiesz
Buried SH below the 2/1 storm. 1-2cm thick layer buried approximately 20cm deep below F precip particles. Photo: M Zia
Good mellow dust on crust skiing with 1”-3” of poorly bonded new snow. Widespread shooting cracks observed on new snow interface on all aspects traveled through the day (primarily E and S facing aspects). Lots of wind transport filling in the skin track between laps and creating light reactive slabs ~5” deep in places (see photo) primarily out of the west but generally inconsistent in direction.
See attached profile and photos.
Buried SH below the 2/1 storm. 1-2cm thick layer buried approximately 20cm deep below F precip particles. Surface snow had some graupel particles in it as well.
We went to the Taylor Fork area and into Cub/Cabin Creek to see what snow surface was buried by recent snow (about 0.8" swe in this area).
It was easy to find small facets in every pit we dug (some had surface hoar as well). We looked at N, SW, W, and E aspects at elevations around 9000 ft. On a north aspect, they were 1mm facets chained together almost 10mm long.
Consistently these weak layer were 8-10" deep (more in areas with drifting). They produced easy ECTP's and one ECTPV.
What was remarkable is that this layer produced shooting cracks all day long. They were generally subtle but would shoot 10-50 feet.
WHAT TO DO? Now is time to shift our mindset to "stepping back". Lots of great powder is on the way. Unfortunately this snow will likely come with a lot of wind. The more snow/water and wind that come, the bigger of a step back, we'll need to take in our terrain choices. By the end of the week, we will likely be avoiding all avalanche terrain including runout zones in areas that get 3-4" of swe.
Skied south of Cooke over the weekend. Winds were L-M gusting to X out of the W, SW. 19" HN at 8500' from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Small, localized cracking of wind slabs, but they weren't as reactive as I would have expected. No avalanches seen, although visibility was limited. There are some density changes within the storm snow, including a layer of graupel. Storm snow was not reactive in hand pits. On solar aspects, there is a MF crust under the recent storm snow and facets under the crust. The crust varies in thickness depending on aspect and elevation, 1-3cm.
