WEATHER: Clear Sky. At ridgeline winds where westerly, moderate with strong gusts. Winds died down in the afternoon. Warmer temps then the last few days.

SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Snow surfaces on south facing slopes surprisingly softened throughout the day even with the morning winds. Slopes with an easterly tilt below ridgelines and in crossloaded gullies had a couple nice creamy inches of blown snow from last Mondays dust on crust. These wind loaded pockets where up to 4″ deep and didn’t produce any cracking or movement while skiing. lots of snowmobile high marking and some ski tracks on NE faceting terrain at the same elevations with no avalanche results.

AVALANCHES: No signs of instability

WEATHER: Light to Moderate west winds. Few clouds. Temps rose to 39F at 10,000 ft, and 27F at 12,000 ft.

SNOWPACK: The fresh surface snow was moist midday on SE to SW aspects.

On E to SE aspects near/above treeline: A few 4″ thick pockets 1F recently drifted snow in the upper 15 feet of start zones, well bonded. This surface was small (<.3mm) windpacked rounds (RGwp). Most of the terrain was 1-2″ of decomposing fragmented particles (DF, DFbk) with .3mm near surface facets growing, over the Feb 16th Meltfreeze crust, which is thick and supportive.

On South aspect near treeline: 1mm radiation recrystallization facets over 1” of moist snow, over the February 16th MFcr. May have gotten cooked later in the day on steep slopes? Still easily visible on low angle late in the day. No obs from steep terrain

On West aspect above treeline: Top 1/3 of start zones blown out to Feb 16th meltfreeze crust, which is wind scalloped texture. Bottom 2/3 of run holding the last 2” of fresh snow over Feb 16th MFcr, sastrugi texture, looked like some near surface faceting but didn’t pull out hand lens. No recent windloading visible across the whole wall.

Guide: Donny
Date: 15-02-18
Location: Wash Gulch to Gothic and back

Weather: High, thin clouds; no precip; strong solar radiation; moderate winds from north, temps in the 20s in AM, low 30s in PM.

Snow / Avy: Less than 1cm of new snow; heavily wind-effected (scoured, loaded, crusted, drifted…); surface was everything from a supporting crust up to 5cm thick to wind-scalloped but soft to drifted in and soft.

WEATHER: High clouds; gusty and swirling winds into the mid-30’s; cold temps; strong solar

SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Major wind event above TL yesterday, stripped all windward aspects bare of any recent new snow, and some zones on ridge top got blown down to bare grass and dirt. Raised old ski tracks visible everywhere on ATL SE-W aspects. Small pockets of freshly wind loaded and dense snow cracked and moved on steep E terrain where it was overlying a stout and slick melt freeze surface, but nothing moving further. Despite strong solar radiation, snow surface stayed locked up due to cold ambient air temps and gusty and cold winds at surface, even on steep solar aspects at all elevations.

WEATHER: Mostly clear sky and a really nice day. Calm winds with some light down valley gusts.

SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Just a weak facet sandwich out there. Any wind hardened slab that we found was faceted and the snowpack layering just didn’t have the ingredients for a slab problem. Surface Hoar was chilling about 20cm below the snow surface, but again needed some type of slab. Small sloughs where the only instability.

WEATHER: Clear, temps in the teens, strong wind from the north all day.

SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Well, I guess we can add wind-hammered to our challenges. The wind was moving snow all day. In the Coney’s area, more southern tilted aspects were loading and developing a stiff crust. By 3PM the windboard was about 2” thick. More northern aspects were scoured and scalloped. HS was no more than 80cm and below the new wind crust was all facets of various sizes. Dug a pit for demonstration purposes and found 3mm DH in the bottom 20cm of the snowpack. All of this said, through the end of the day we saw no signs of instabilities besides small “dinner plates” breaking loose.

WEATHER: Mostly in the trees all day. Looked like mostly clear sky and we obviously couldn’t feel the wind much.

SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: Old growth timber and mostly treed slopes had nice dense carvey snow with light NSF on top. More open slopes where much more faceted with a deeper and variable ski pen. Sloughing was the only avalanche problem encountered on both of these slope characteristics.

Dug on a north aspect just below ridgeline at 11,400ft. HS 140cm, Jan 11th SH was down 25cm with mostly F+ hard snow on top. Shovel tilt produced easy and clean shears on this interface and CT test had no results. The rest of the snowpack was 4f-1f and faceted. Had no other layers of concern. I thought we mite find a few isolated slopes on the decent with a wind hardened slab over the SH but that wasn’t the case. Maybe somewhere else.