DATE OF OBSERVATION: 01/15/2015
NAME: Alex
ELEVATION: 9-10,000′
WEATHER: Sunny skies, cold temps in morning around 5F, but warmed quickly in late morning. Sweating in the sun! Calm or no wind.
SNOWPACK: Today we skied in Elk Creek. Skinned up the ridge and found sun crusts on southern aspects, and weak faceted snow on northeast and east aspects. Lots of surface hoar. The snowpack was 3-4 feet deep. We skied a few short pitches on NE and E terrain. Around 6″ of new snow from the last few days’ storms. The snow underneath was pretty rotten. The new snow easily sloughed on steep terrain, especially around rock/pillow features. Just about every skier, every run caused a large slough that ran slow, but traveled over 100 feet. It was not hard to stay in front of the slough on your skis, but it could definitely push a skier into trees if you weren’t moving quickly. The new snow was fairly faceted, and these sloughs behaved like the facet sloughs we were seeing in December.