Avalanches:
Weather: Few clouds in the am and calm winds trending to moderate with strong gusts from the W SW AT 13:00 the top of Mt. Emmons. Warm temps.
Snowpack: Throughout the am light westerly winds kept the snow surface cool before turning moist on east and southeast aspects around 1200. No obvious signs of instabilities on slopes up to 36*.
Indy Basin: 10cm ski pen 45cm boot pen on the skiers left side near treeline. New snow preserved on west facing slopes 10cm of dry snow, dust on crust.
Elk Basin: SE facing shot from the ridge provided moist, dust on crust type skiing. Roller balls.
Evans Basin: The east wall looked blown out, roller balled and one small wet loose. The S line from gunsight looked clean and good skiing till the basin.
RLB: Variable, ripple to windboard. Dry snow till 10,600′ where the egress turned to mank.

Avalanches: No signs of instability
Weather: \Sunny and warm. Calm winds increasing to Moderate & gusting to Strong as the day went on.
Snowpack: Some light transport, not much snow available for transport because of crusty surfaces.

Avalanches:
Weather:
Snowpack: East facing slopes in the morning had breaker crust but skiable. Quickly warming temps were hedged by increasing winds and clouds throughout the day. Slightly above freezing temps led to moist snow surface and softening crusts in the afternoon.
Found dry snow in protected WNW terrain sheltered by trees. No signs of instability on slopes up to 34 degrees. In the afternoon a refreeze zipper crust was forming on sunnier slopes

Avalanches: R1-d2 natural wet slab on the southern side of purple ridge. Appeared as though wet loose debris from a rock band up high stepped down once it reached the weaker snowpack at lower elevation.  **CBAC note.  This slide is from a previous warmup. It was first observed the morning of 2/16**
Weather: Hot. Mild breeze up high kept things cool
Snowpack: Firm. New snow sat above v-day sun crusts and wind board. Did not punch through v-day interface all day, difficult to impossible to kick steps into this layer in many areas. Saw some cracking in new snow but slabs were 4″ or less and did not propagate far. New snow distribution above tree line is variable and as expected for nw winds.

image1

Avalanches: Some more rollerballs today on E and SE aspects A/NTL, and two very small wet loose on a SE aspect ATL, harmless in size. Had good views of a lot of the Ruby Range and no other fresh activity. Some older wet loose on below treeline southerlies from previous warm ups, one was a D2 in size and gouged to the ground (See Dustin’s photo).
Weather: Light to moderate SW winds with no snow transport. Clouds increased from clear to thin broken by PM. Warm temps
Snowpack: Near and above treeline, about 2-5″ of settled storm snow became moist to wet on E to S aspects, over the solid and still frozen VD crust. Surfaces refroze around 2 pm. as clouds and winds increased. Sloppier snow observed below treeline. No signs of instabilities on various aspects and steep terrain, except some minor rollerballs.

Small wet loose and rollerballs on a SE aspect ATL

Avalanches: Triggered a few very small facet sloughs in steep terrain that previously avalanched.
Weather: Patly cloudy due to high thin clouds. Calm winds during our tour, but we were either in protected areas or a to low elevations. Didn’t see any snow blowing off the peeks.
Snowpack: Ski pen in the 10-15 cm range with boot pen around 30cm. Many slopes have already avalanched and pose a very small facet slough problem if they are in the 40 degree range. Regarding the slopes that didn’t avalanche; some don’t have much structure at all, weak but still suportive. Others have obvious persistent slab structure, but it was unreactive. HS was around 100-130 on slopes that haven’t avalanched. Dug on one protected slope with an HS of 100cm. 1f decomposing slab over basel 4f, estimated 2mm facets. Slope test was 6 people kick turning on slope with no collapsing. The structure exists for some chance of an avalanche to happening, though we didn’t find the right place and didn’t observe any obvious signs to instability.

Avalanches:
Weather: Partly cloudy and warm with moderate winds from the NW. Some plumes noted at higher elevations, but no evidence of wind transport NTL or BTL.
Snowpack: Was able to ski cut a fresh windslab on a small, steep convex roll on an obviously drifted and cross loaded feature around 10,000′ on a NE facing slope.
Quick snowpit in same area (but not cross loaded) showed 4 cm of new snow over rounding facets from 4f to 1f. ECTP 27+1 PC on the hardness change 37cms deep. Basel facets are large, but rounding and sintering.

Avalanches:
Weather: Few clouds, calm swirling winds near the top of RCG. Warm temps strong solar.
Snowpack: New snow has settled into a fast moving inch of warm snow. Stout 4-5cm MFcr provided mostly supportable skiing until 10,600′ from there on out the skiing was moist throughout the MFcr at 1300 hrs. No signs of instabilities throughout the tour. Moist grains 10cm below the MFcr @ 10,600′ dry below the crust @ 11,400′.

Avalanches: Observed one fresh windslab on an east aspect of Scarp Ridge, ATL, small in size. See photo. SS-N-R1-D1-U. We dropped a cornice on a S facing windloaded slope above treeline and got a small 6-8″ wind slab to pull out, which ran on a mid storm layer but gouged down to the VD crust further downslope. SS-AC-R1-D1-S
Weather: Few clouds. Moderate NW to W ridgetop winds with light transport; some stronger gusts. Warm temps.
Snowpack: Settled storm snow totals are 3-4″ along Scarp Ridge and Peeler Peak, and 2″ on Schuykill Ridge, with drifts up to 12″ thick from NW loading patterns, mostly ATL and some isolated NTL features. Snow appears to be bonding much better today to the Valentine’s Day crust; minor cracking in drifts but otherwise it was hard to get the new snow to budge. Winds kept surfaces cool at upper elevations, but we observed some small rollerballing in windsheltered southerly facing cirques N/ATL. Below treeline the new snow melded nicely into older crusts. No natural wet loose observed and we traveled on numerous southerly facing steep slopes up to 40 degrees in the afternoon with no instabilities. The VD crust remained solidly frozen and supportive through most of the day; it began to thaw late PM near bushes and rocks on S/SW aspects NTL. The northerly facing below treeline slopes that we traveled were entirely weak and faceted out, with no persistent slab structure. No signs of instability with the PS problem on various aspects and elevations.

Fresh windslab on Scarp Ridge, E aspect ATL