Eleven Snowcat Terrain 12/11/18:

Notable collapses on South facing terrain,  Multiple ECTM results with Sudden Collapse failures indicating the potential for propagation. Snow profile on South had failures below a crust capping early season facets, while on West there was no crust but failure on same early season facets.

On 11/25 a shallow avalanche out of extreme terrain released a large powder cloud dusting a large area with snow and shallow debris.

Location: Coney’s
Date of Observation: 11/30/2017
Name: Tim Brown

Aspect: North East, East, South East
Elevation: 9,800-10,800′

Weather:

BKN Skies, NW Winds M-S, Air Temps ~35F

Snowpack:

Far skier’s left side of Coney’s 2nd Bowl:  Persistent Slab structure is still reactive in isolated pockets of the shallow and variable snow up to 40cm deep.  On the way up, venturing out of old tracks produced several significant collapses and cracks up to 10m away and 30cm deep.  The problematic snowpack areas are where stiffer (P-K hard) and more supportable, wind-loaded snow overlies large basal facets and depth hoar.  We did not observe any slab displacement on the low-angle terrain (<30 degrees) where we traveled.  Several steeper gullies appeared to have deeper wind-deposited snow, but we avoided the siren-call of these nasty terrain traps.