Weather:Increasing clouds throughout day, no winds, pleasant temperatures in shade
Snowpack: HS ranged between 45-65cm on tour toward Green Lake. Lots of pits and ECT showed no propagation potential and lots of slabs breaking apart during moderate and hard loading steps. Most concerning could be new thanksgiving snow (10cm) which are stiff wind crusts with abrupt soft/faceted snow below. Wind crust could be stiff enough to carry large load (1.5″ swe) but any slide seems that it would scour to ground with so much weak (2-4mm) depth hoar/facets.

Avalanches: none
Weather: Warm, sunny, little to no wind
Snowpack: Shallow up high on south aspect, 100 cm lower down in bowl. 10 cm sitting on a four cm thick crust with shiite below that. Two collapses in lower part on 30-degree pitch while climbing. No significant signs of instability, surface snow warming up by noon.

Avalanches: One naturel windslab that likely failed a couple days ago. Observed from to far away to accurately estimate size. Crown was about 12,200 feet in elevation on an easterly aspect.
Weather: Mostly clear sky. Moderate Westerly winds at 13,000. Light winds at lower elevation. No snow transport.
Snowpack: Alpine terrain is back to being variable snow conditions due to the recent wind events. Snow surfaces are soft and textured in some places, wind loaded or pillowed in others, or just straight wind crust/wind board. Didn’t observe any obvious signs to instability, but used cations or avoided isolated terrain features in extreme terrain. Most hazardous feeling areas were, where hard slabs tapered to weak snow near rock outcrops, and on convex terrain features with previous wind loading.

IMG_1044

IMG_1044-1

Avalanches: Natural sloughing in steep terrain and a few small cornice falls.
Weather: 3 hoods 4 jackets and a thick puffy kind of cold. Mostly Cloudy (7/8th) sky with very light snowfall at times. At 12,800ft winds were light from the west between 1pm and 2pm. At lower elevations winds were calm to light throughout the day.
Snowpack: Above Treeline: Previous South to West winds have transported the new snow into drifts on lee features and build soft cornices. These drifts were around 18″ deep and more cohesive then a few days ago, but still very soft. Pushed on many pillows at ridgeline with no movement. Cornice falls and sloughs also didn’t propagate into a slab.

Average storm totals in the SE-E above treeline bowl that we traveled were in the 10″ range. Most of the new snow looked like it drifted out of South to West terrain were it was exposed to previous winds.

Below Treeline: The snowpack is still weak and shallow. No avalanche problems observed.

Dug 1st pit around 11,500ft on a SE aspect and didn’t find a slab throughout the whole snowpack. Snowpack consisted of new snow over crust, facet, crust, facet combinations. Dug 2nd pit on the crown of the 11/24 skier trigged avalanche on Agustata Mountain at 12,400ft. Profile below.

Due south aspects were warming up slightly, otherwise all snow surfaces appeared to stay cold.

Agusta-crown-11.28

Weather: The morning started out partly cloudy before skys became overcast by noon or observed with light snow showers. Skys started to break up in the late afternoon before light scattered showers redeveloped around 4pm. Winds were generally calm with a light southerly breeze at times.
Snowpack: Short tour due to flat light conditions. Total storm accumulations were in the 1-2″ range. Temperatures felt warm leading to moist/sticky new snow that was settling quickly.

Avalanches: Noticed one avalanche between Mt treasure and Treasury that likely occurred during the natural cycle that happened during the week of 11/16. U-N-R2-D2-I. Wind loaded bowl on an East aspect at about 13,000ft.
Weather: Partly cloudy skys in the morning gave way to few clouds by mid-day. Ridgetop winds were light from the West. Temperatures felt sightly cooler then the previous days with snow surfaces on southerly slopes staying frozen or dry.
Snowpack: Steep Southerly slopes had a wafer thin crust from yesterdays warm temps and those snow surfaces remained frozen today. Most alpine northerly and westerly slopes were put through the sand blaster during the last wind event. Easterly and Southerly alpine slopes vary from nice creamy textured surfaces to firm hardslabs and windboard. No instabilities were observed while traveling but one snowpit on an easterly slope produced a propagating test result with the persistent slab that started forming on 11/16. Pit attached below.

U-N-R2-D2-I. Natural avalanche that likely occurred during the week of 11/16. Located between Mt Treasure and Treasury.

11.24.15

Avalanches: None witnessed.

Weather: Calm, clear and rather warm. 42 Farenheit at Kebler trailhead
Snowpack: Dug two pits around 11,600 feet in the basin between Purple and Owen.

First pit dug on ENE aspect. HS=60 cm. From the bottom, there was around 5cm of 1-3 mm facets with a deteriorating crust above, topped by 40 cm of 1mm and Fist hardness grains. This was topped by 10 cm of 4f windslab and capped with 5 cm of 1f/p wind crust. Crust either gave no penetration or in shallower areas your boot went all the way to the ground.

Snowpit 1

Snowpit 2

Avalanches: Snow collapsed and avalanche was triggered from below while we were skinning. No burials or injuries. No one was caught.Best estimates are 100′ wide, 300 or 400′ in running length. Possibly D2. We never saw the crown up close, but estimate it was around 3-feet deep on average.
Weather: Sunny, light wind from SW.
Snowpack: Below 12,000′ on the south-facing aspect was a mixture of some occasional wind slab mixed in-between snow that was virtually spring-like – upper layers that were turning into rounds. Above 12,000′ was windslab or soft slabs on top of facets.

IMG_1442resize

IMG_1438resize

Avalanches: No signs of instability observed across multiple slopes and aspects.
Weather: Few to scattered thin clouds. Light west winds. Mild temps.
Snowpack: Traveled across a variety of aspects above and below treeline to observe current snow surface. South aspects became moist yesterday at all elevations. Surfaces are quite firm above treeline and weak below treeline, consisting of:
-Pencil hard melt-freeze crusts (11/16 crust exposed due to scouring) on scoured south or southeast aspects ATL
-1F or pencil hard, small grained, wind packed rounds (wind board or old windslabs) on all aspects ATL, anywhere that winds had drifted or deposited snow, especially in gullies or rollovers ATL. This is the predominant snow surface above treeline right now.
-4F faceting sastrugi on scoured features on all aspects ATL. Became moist on southerly aspects.
-Fist hard 1 to 1.5 mm facets make up the entire snowpack on shaded aspects below treeline, with some decomposing graupel at the surface. Snow depth was less than 12″ BTL.