Cement Creek

Date of Observation: 01/30/2022
Name: Evan Ross

Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Cement Creek primarily between 9,800ft and 12,000ft on a variety of aspects.

Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:

Weather: Another beautiful day. Calm winds.

Snowpack: Nothing notable or different from the currently reported conditions.

On a northwesterly slope at 10,000ft. There was about 8 to 10 inches of snow for entrainment in a loose dry avalanche. HS here was about 140cm. That tracks about the same for the NW mountains. A sluff in that snowpack would remain small. This location was near the valley bottom and I wondered if the cold air sinking into the valley would lead to a weaker snowpack. While we didn’t travel on these other slopes, northerly facing slopes lower in cement creek and below 10,000ft seem like they would be more significant due to the shallower snowpack and the higher likelihood that a small sluff would gouge and take out the whole snowpack. It’s not often that we see an actual snowpack in some of these lower places.

Near and above treeline we didn’t encounter a concern for old wind slabs over faceted snow. No signs of instability while traveling on what we could find for suspect terrain. I wouldn’t completely rule it out, but it sure seemed very isolated. Any of the wind-board that I dug into was already faceting and those slabs seemed like they were older than last Thursday’s wind event. These elevations are really wrecked by previous wind events and there just hasn’t been much snow available for transport.