AVALANCHES: No recent slides.

WEATHER: Broken skies. Moderate to strong winds at ridge line, elsewhere winds were light. Plumes on ridge line but didn’t seem to be actively loading.

SNOWPACK: On south: the last few inches of new snow is faceting above the most recent crust. No signs of instability
On north: Some denser, wind affected snow above treeline. Around 10,500 feet and lower, the snowpack starts to feel mostly faceted out. Still supportive on skis, but felt weak throughout to pole probes and not much slab hanging on. No signs of instability
On east: Dug a snow pit near treeline. No results in stability tests. Top half of the slab is faceting out, but still some 1F and 4F slab lingering. The Dec 13th facets and below are 4F+ in hardness, large in size (2-3 mm), but rounding. No signs of instability.

UPLOADS:

20150124_Emmons

AVALANCHES: One small skier triggered slide on an isolated terrain feature around 11000 ft facing west southwest. Only a few inches deep ran approximately 30 ft. down slope 30 ft. wide. Appeared to be small firm windslab running on facet/ crust combo. Slow moving. Made a cool noise. Other, older, larger slide activity on similar aspects in these basins.

WEATHER: Overcast skies. Temperatures in the low 20’s. Calm winds in valley bottoms, moderate winds with stronger gusts above tree line out of the northwest, strong enough to move snow over Pearl Pk. Otherwise not a lot of blowing snow.

SNOWPACK: Shallow snow pack up high around upper brush creek/star pass area with lots of crusts from wind and sun exposure. No collapsing observed, but one pitch yielded shooting cracks across a 20 something degree wind stiffened southwest slope.

WEATHER: Few clouds, silly cold temps, Strong NNW winds at ridge lines above 12,500ft. Not a lot of snow available for transport on the Western sides of ridges lines but there was still blowing snow on summit ridge lines.

SNOWPACK: Didn’t find any new windslabs of concerning size on east and northeast aspects below ridgelines even with drifting snow today. Upper snowpack mainly consisted of 20cm low density snow sitting on 1f+ to P hard slabs from previous wind events. Didn’t find any buried surface hoar. Small loose snow avalanches was the main concern. Still didn’t have the confidence to push persistent slab margins in steep rocking terrain, or what looked to be hard slabs sitting on facets in ATL wind affected areas.

AVALANCHES: Numerous loose snow avalanches from the last few days that where d1.5’s at best. Several shallow slabs on on east facing terrain generally propagating 50ft wide. One in the ragged wilderness area looked to be a couple hundred feet wide.

UPLOADS:

LOCATION: Kebler Pass Area
DATE OF OBSERVATION: 01/21/2015


UPLOADS:

AVALANCHES: Fresh persistent slab avalanche off of NE aspect of Scarp Ridge, new in the past 2 days. Looks like it might have been triggered by rockfall. 3 feet at its deepest, most of it was about 1-2 feet, ~20 feet wide at apex, fanned out to about 100 feet wide. Multiple failure planes, looked like the Jan 11 interface on the flanks and ground in the middle. Surprisingly shallow snow depth for this part of the zone; I believe that path also ran during the Solstice Storm. HS-NR-R2-D2-O/G

UPLOADS:

AVALANCHES: Fresh looking natural persistent slab avalanche on an east aspect below treeline. Hard to tell exactly when it ran, but I chatted with a resident who keeps eyes on that slope and she thought it was new today. The slope is a crossloaded, sagebrush slope below Whetstone/Round Mountain. The slab looked about 12″-18″ deep, (most of the season’s snowpack), and was about 100 feet wide. SS-N-R2-D1.5-O

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