Date of Observation: 12/23/2022
Name: Zach Guy
Zone: Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Baxter Basin and Cascade Mtn, traveled on north, east, and south aspects to 11,700′
Observed avalanche activity: Yes
Avalanches: Nothing new today. A handful of small wind slabs at all elevations and one potentially larger avalanche off of the Shield on Emmons appear to have run during the arctic blast.
Weather: Few clouds, light winds, mild temps.
Snowpack: As is often the case with these extreme wind events, the terrain got ravaged and there appears to be far more wind erosion than loading from Wednesday night’s event. Lots of sastrugi and raised tracks on all aspects. Winds eroded down to the early December graupel layer in areas, which was buried about 50 cm deep a few days ago. Of course, there are some terrain features that caught the drifting snow and formed hard slabs, most commonly abrupt concavities or rollovers. Ski cuts and snowmobile cuts on numerous of these suspect features produced minimal signs of instability; one slope cracked. Probably the best news from all the devastation is that the near-surface facet layer that was quite weak and soft on the surface a few days ago has been destroyed in many areas because of the wind event. I found it still preserved in very sheltered trees below about 5″ of recent snow, and below sun crusts on southerlies where the winds hadn’t stripped the crusts away.
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- Small wind slab on Bichmond
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- Raised tracks indicating extensive wind erosion.
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- Large sastrugi indicating extensive erosion on the NE face of Richmond
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- An example of a slope that I would avoid because it is smooth and looks recently windloaded
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- The only feedback I got from wind drifted terrain today. Wind slabs were stubborn under foot and sled.
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- Lots of raised tracks and sastrugi on planar and convex terrain of Schuylkill Ridge.
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- A northwest facing slope (Wolverine) scoured to the ground. That’s a common theme on West and Northwest facing terrain at higher elevations.
