Location: Cement Creek Area
Date of Observation: 03/03/2019
Name: Eric Murrow
Subject: Lower Cement Creek and down valley avi obs
Aspect: North, North East, East, West, North West
Elevation: 8750′ – 10200′
Avalanches:
Round Mountain D2 W, D2 NW
Whetstone – Claw, D2 NE
Gothic – reports of East facing running in multiple spots with one slide crossing river and hitting a cabin.
Weather: Snowfall S-1 to S2 between 1030 am to 400pm. Accumulations during the day amounted to just over an inch. Winds were light until about 3pm when they picked up and started stripping snow out of the trees. Visibility was obscured most of the day so ID’ing natural avalanches was limited.
Snowpack: Average HS through this NW – N facing terrain was 130cm. HST since 2/28 was 40cm. Bottom 50cm of snowpack is 2-3mm facets F+ hard. The middle of the snowpack was 4f+ hard with 40cm F hard storm snow at the top. Experienced only one moderate-sized collapsed during the day. Two layers of concern are basal facets and a thin layer of facets in the midpack that were 1-1.5mm. Stability test did not produce propagating results but I sure wouldn’t want to be on steep terrain with this structure. Very little cracking within the storm snow.
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