Avalanches: Fresh D2 wet loose avalanche ran today off of Gibson Ridge (East aspect BTL) and a handful of D1 to D1.5 wet loose above treeline in the Ruby Range (S, SE aspects) that ran in the past day or two.
Weather: Hot temps, clouds increasing in the afternoon. Calm wind.
Snowpack: At 3 pm, the snowpack was unsupportive; boot pen was knee+ deep. On an east aspect BTL, we found water had moved through the entire snowpack and was pooling along several crust layers 30-50 cm deep but draining deeper into the snowpack.

Gibson Ridge, East, 10,000′

Mineral Point, South-Southeast, 11,700′

Hancock, SE, 11,800′

Avalanches:
Weather: Clear sky, calm/light winds at ridgeline @ 9:00 increasing to strong NW by 10:30
T: Lo -6C @ TH @ 6:30
0C @ 9:00 @ 10,900
Snowpack: W @ 10,900 ridgeline popped off a 4- 6” thick (Pencil hard) plywood sized wind slab overlying 10mm facets on a 20* slope wind whale
N 10,000-10,900 alternating pencil hard windslab & cohesion less facet wallowing ~12” deep of impressive grain size.
no other signs of instability, but our timing was early for the corn cycle so wouldn’t have seen anything. A few short wallow sections skiing up SE ~ 10:30 sheltered in open glades.
Snow in general seemed shallow but dense E-S-W

Avalanches: handful of natural D1-1.5 wet loose initiating in steep and extreme terrain on SE-SW facing terrain all elevations in Ruby Range. Other southerly slopes appeared well behaved with little moving snow. DId observe wet slab/mud slide adjectnt to Kebler Pass road this evening (photos)
Weather: Warm, very light westerly winds in afternoon. Clear, with strong radiation. no wind transport observed.
Snowpack: Snow surfaces warmed on all but high northwest-north facing terrain near and above treeline. All other aspects moistened and become wet in afternoon to 20cm deep. Surfaces started to re-freeze 5pm in shade. did not dig for lingering PS structure, but did ski steep northerlies, cautiously. Around 1730 surfaces in shade began to re-freeze, but felt wet grained snow extended 30cm deep, losing cohesion late in day.

D1.5 wet loose Afley lower right corner

Schuykill Peak D1 Wet lOose

Wet slab/mud slide Kebler Pass

IMG_2440

Avalanches: no signs of instability, though, did feel a random, unlikely, dense chunk of windslab from 2/28 could be pried out on a crash, hard ski, or sidehilling.
Weather: clear, scattered high cirrus at sunrise. Light west winds. Solid freeze, temps in teens
Snowpack: Solid freeze overnight. snow surfaces on terrain skied (steep, north-northeasterly) mix of dry, faceted surface snow, rock hard windboard and frozen melt/freeze crusts at lower northerly elevations. no significant wind transport observed.

IMG_2384

Avalanches:
Weather: Clear sky, light winds at ridgeline.
Snowpack: Around 12000ft only the upper 3″ was moist at 1pm. Sitting over firmer crusty snow below in one hand pit. 40+ degree slopes may have produced small wet loose. Below 11,500ft’ish the upper snowpack had made the full spring transition and was staying firm under the wet snow. The last southeasterly pitch around 9800ft was becoming unsupportive to skis at 2pm and probably would have been fully unsupportive to boots.
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Avalanches:
Weather: Clear skys in the morning became overcast by 9am. Those clouds started thinning around 1pm. Strong northwesterly wind gusts at ridgeline.
Snowpack: Southerly aspects mostly stayed locked up. Below 12,000 feet the snow surface softened in the afternoon. Above 13,000ft the surface crusts where supportive but only about 5cm’s thick and capping faceted snow or layers of crust facets below. Yesterdays snow was blow in up to an 1″ in spots. No avalanche concerned observed.