Date of Observation: 03/05/2022
Name: Cosmo Langsfeld
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Cement Creek Ranch
Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches:
Weather: ~2.5” since beginning of storm.
Snowpack:
5454
Date of Observation: 03/04/2022
Name: Zach Guy and Jack Caprio
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Mount Emmons Happy Chutes area. Traveled on E and NE aspects to 10,000 ft.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Skier triggered a handful of moist loose avalanches on NE aspects below treeline, D1 to 1.5 in size. They entrained more snow than you might expect because the moist surface snow plowed through the sandbox of dry facets below once sluffs started gaining momentum.
Weather: Warm and cloudy, with enough sun filtering through the clouds for excellent greenhousing.
Snowpack: Snow surfaces got damp on all aspects that we traveled on, which spurred rollerballs and pinwheels on more northerly aspects which have stayed mostly dry all week. We looked at a number of NE-facing slopes that avalanched naturally during the last cycle. The previous avalanche activity did NOT flush out the facet layer; rather they just scraped off the top layer of the sandbox and left a thin bed surface crust in places. I expect repeat offenders on these slopes once slabs rebuild. We got several localized collapses (radiated about 10 or 15 feet) on low angle east and steeper northeast. We got a mix of easy propagating and non-propagating results with ECTs. Hard to find steep terrain around here that didn’t run naturally during the storm. On a steep ESE slope, the top 6″ is a stout melt-freeze crust and water has percolated through the sandbox. On a steep ENE slope, slabs were getting moist and/or there was some kind of thin surface crust, but the weak layer remained dry or could have been moist in some slopes.
Photos:
5453
Date of Observation: 03/03/2022
Name: Mark Robbins
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Anthracites/playground
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Maybe previously reported? On playground up track, assuming it ran during the last avalanche cycle. Didn’t closely inspect but looked like the full pre-presidents day storm slab running on the dry-spell surface. See photos.
Snowpack: Got two small but somewhat puckering collapses breaking the up track in the playground. At 11,200-11,300 due north. Touring back up the south side just after noon, surface was wet but still supportive. Noted a few deep widely propogating cracks, see photo.
Photos:
5452
Date of Observation: 03/03/2022
Name: jeff banks
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Skied mostly Sunny aspects & short N facing slope
Observed avalanche activity: No
Weather: 4F at 8:00, climbing out of the valley inversion temps were warming fast
intermittent thin clouds & negligible wind did little to slow the melt
Snowpack: 20-25cm re-freeze this AM in valley floor
~10-15cm re-freeze ~10,000ft
~9:20 Passed on skinning up SE slopes > 30º as the crust was quickly melting and exposing the moist, weak facets below. poor structure in shallow snowpack.
S & SW have much more developed (thicker & full corn) melt freeze structure and more more supportive to skis as the day warmed.
Only traveled on 1 N face slope ~50m in size, but produced:
2 Medium shooting cracks & collapse ~5m long & 2-3cm drop
1 Large shooting crack & collapse ~15m long & 3-5cm drop
5451
Date of Observation: 03/03/2022
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Upper Slate River, many aspects between 9,600-11,300ft.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: 1 loose wet avalanche on a west aspect above treeling. Otherwise nothing new and notable.
Weather: High clouds, hot temps, and calm wind.
Snowpack: The PSa problem felt stuborn with no obvious signs to instablity. Also no collapsing or obviouse signs to instablity traveling on the sunny half of the compass and in areas with a wet snowpack. I traveled on steep slopes, but not big slopes.
You have to get close to a north aspect to find a cold snow surface. Otherwise, the snow surfaces were wet. East and west aspects will have a notable crust, that crust will thicken of course as you head south around the compass. I didn’t find an area where water had drained to the February weak layer on east and west aspects, but there will still be a couple-inch thick crust on the current snow surface. Lots of water moving through the snowpack on SE to S to SW aspects and those will be locked up once they freeze again. This whole area looked like it would take a notable load before we see another widespread natural avalanche cycle. Mostly due to the thick crusts and the thick slabs, with the mid-February weak layer gaining some strength under those slabs over the last week.
Photos:
5450
Date of Observation: 03/03/2022
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: Northeast side of Carbon from the Carbon Creek TH (8,800-11,400ft). Climbed E, SE & NE; descended NW & NE.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Two naturals that seemed fairly fresh. A wet slab (D2) on one of the east chutes. A wind slab (D1) below a cross-loaded ridge in the main cirque that started in the new snow and stepped down to near the ground above a cliff band.
Weather: Hot at 9:30, and only got hotter. No wind. Light cloud cover.
Snowpack: A mixed bag. Exposed E & SE slopes were already quite wet at 10:00. Some slopes were supportable, others were breaker. Lots of collapsing on these slopes, where you get the sense that the wet surface snow is levitating an inch or two above the junk below. Someone yesterday described northern pow as “cream cheese.” Today it seemed a little more like when you try to make ghetto ice cream by shaking milk, vanilla, sugar & snow in a ziploc bag for 20 minutes. Lightly rippled alpine snow (NW & NE) was fabulous! Down low (12:30) it was more like sloppy mashed potatoes with a little too much milk & butter.
Photos:
5449
Date of Observation: 03/02/2022
Name: Evan Ross
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Washington Cultch, mostly southerly facing slopes BTL/NTL.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A couple of fresh slab avalanches off of Schuylkill Ridge. Both were D2 in size and released at 11,200ft. One released on a northeast aspect and the other an east aspect. I suspect there were triggered by loose snow avalanches coming off the rocks or sunny slopes above. As the avalanches ran they entrained wet snow.
Various loose wet avalanches that have run in recent days on steep sunny slopes. Nothing particularly notable.
Weather: Hot and sunny. Calm winds. A few clouds came through.
Snowpack: Looked in various locations on SE to W looking at the wet snow and if water was creating issues as it encountered the mid-February weak interface. In a quick summary, I didn’t end up finding a particularly concerning area where water was hitting or about to hit a dry weak layer. Surface cracks in the top couple inches of the snowpack were everywhere, similar to what you may see in the springtime as the snowpack is rapidly changing.
10,800ft on SE and SW. The recent round of water had made it to the mid-February interface and I didn’t find a particular slab concern. Water had previously drained below the mid-February interface and created various percolation columns below those crusts and into the larger grained melt forms or facets below. Of course, there is variation in snowpack structure based on slope angle, and how big their drainage is, such as concave slopes or slopes below cliff bands.
11,600ft, SE aspect, 30-degree slope. The water had made it to the mid-February crust and was running along the crust at this location. After the pit was dug you could see the water continuing to accumulate in the pit wall. In this location, water had also previously drained below the crust, earlier in the month, and into the larger grained facets. A CT test produced no results.
West between 10,200ft and 10,600ft. The upper 2 to 3″ of snow was wet. While the 1 to 2-foot slabs on the mid-February interface were dry with no water close to the interface. Addintally, traveling in this area at the end of last week I had encountered many collapses and shooting cracks. Now everything was quiet, but the snowpack structure still remained concerning for the PSa problem.
Photos:
5448
Date of Observation: 03/02/2022
Name: Zach Guy
Zone: Southeast Mountains
Route Description: 3 p.m. views of Rustlers Gulch, Copper Creek, Deer Creek, Pearl Pass, etc. from CBMR.
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: A handful of undocumented D1 to 1.5 wet avalanches that ran sometime in the past few days. One looked like a D1.5 wet slab on a west aspect NTL above Pearl Pass Road. In the same terrain feature, another D1.5 wet pile that I suspect could be a wet slab but couldn’t see the start zone. The rest were all D1 wet loose.
Weather:
Snowpack:
Photos:
5446
Date of Observation: 03/02/2022
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Anthracites , Tree Chute and 7 Bowl
Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: None in the immediate area
Weather: Calm and Warm
Snowpack: It was like skiing cream cheese . The warmth from yesterday made the snowpack dense anything exposed to the sun was getting crispy or starting to get wet by about 10am.
5445
Date of Observation: 03/01/2022
Name: Ben Pritchett Eric Murrow
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Keberl Pass corridor to snowbike avalanche slope near the Y and Red Lady Bowl in the afternoon
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Inspected the previously reported avalanches near they Y and in Red Lady Bowl.
Weather: Ridgeline Wind Speed: Calm
Wind Loading: None
Temperature: 50 F
Sky Cover: Clear
Weather Description: Very warm day, full sun, no wind.
Snowpack: We found 1-finger hard slabs resting on Fist-hard facets. The slabs were soft on top, stiffer at the bottom, with an obvious dirt stripe above the faceted weak layer.
At a northwest-facing crown profile above a snowbike-triggered avalanche from Sunday, we found a reactive, dry snowpack. ECTP 14 on the dry-spell weak layer.
Traveling through sunny, southerly-facing terrain on Mt. Emmons, we experienced many dozen collapses with long-running (100’s of feet) cracks. Meltwater reached the dry-spell facets and created unstable conditions.
A profile on the flank of a large skier-triggered avalanche in Red Lady Bowl showed the meltwater reached the weak layer yesterday. Water wicked through the low-porosity facets. Today, meltwater reached another 10 to 12 inches below the facets into the upper part of the Holiday Slab.
Photos:
5444
