Afternoon Wet Check

Location: Kebler Pass Area
Date of Observation: 04/07/2020
Name: Evan Ross
Subject: Afternoon Wet Check
Aspect: North East, South, West
Elevation: 9,200-12,000

Avalanches: A few more Cornices Falls observed and natural wet loose avalanches.

Weather: Another Beautiful day. Mostly Clear Sky and light winds at the elevations traveled.

Snowpack: Attempted to stay fairly close to the Kebler TH and low in elevations to check on the wet snow bits. The snowpack stayed supportable for the most part with spotty punching through the snowpack. The upper snowpack was wet, or it was wet to the ground on some southerly facing slopes, and a small loose wet avalanche problem developed around the compass. You would need a steep slope to get one of those loose wets moving. In the morning all of those aspects would have been crusty and this wasn’t the first time this upper snowpack had gotten wet. I didn’t observe any collapses in the snowpack.

Targeted a couple NE facing slopes to see how water was moving through the snowpack and to add more data into other recent data on those aspects. My hunt for something concerning didn’t materialize on slopes below 10,000ft. It doesn’t mean the problem isn’t out there, but I didn’t find it. The wetting front on all slopes near and above 35 degrees was in the upper 20cm’s of the snowpack. I found some ice lenses down to ~20cm, but the general wet snow was in the upper 10cm of the snowpack with some moist snow below, before eventually becoming mostly dry. No CT results on the upper 60cm of snowpack in those test pits.