Date of Observation: 01/07/2022
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Cement Creek. Various aspects between 9,000ft and 11,600ft.
Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: No new avalanches and taking a moment to look around from Double Top Ridge I didn’t see anything obvious jumping out.
Weather: Few clouds, warm, calm.
Snowpack: The snowpack is very set up and supportive. Big settlement cones on the aspens. Boot pen about 20 to 30cm on most slopes. Closer to 45cm on shaded northerly facing slopes. The sun and temps were doing their thing with lots of thick and/or moist snow surfaces. Found surface hoar down in the valleys and all the way up to double top ridge. It seemed to survive on many of the east aspects and of course on the northerly aspects. West was moist in the afternoon and SH had melted away.
Of course no obvious signs of instability. No collapses or cracking. Heavy snowmobiles jumping around. Didn’t pull out the probe, but HS based off the exposed signposts looked around 140cm. For the most part, where we traveled the snowpack had an even depth. I wonder if we would have observed signs of instability if we could have traveled, the same way, in steep cliffy terrain with a more variable snowpack depth.
Lots of wind effects and wind erosion in the alpine.
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