Date of Observation: 04/06/2022
Name: Eric Murrow
Zone: Southeast Mountains and Northwest Mountains
Route Description: Mount Emmons
Observed avalanche activity: No
Avalanches: none observed
Weather: Clear skies with seasonably cool temperatures. Westerly winds blowing 10-20 and gusts around 40 above treeline. On a few occasions, the wind did find soft snow to transport, but no significant loading was observed.
Snowpack: I traveled through northeast, east, southeast, and south leeward terrain features looking for recent slab formation from the wind event and did not find any in the terrain I traveled. I observed lots of wind erosion on north and northwest alpine slopes. I did see a few features inset in gullies or chutes with smooth textures that looked suspicious for holding a thin, hard slab. I would guess there are isolated terrain features with recent hard slab formation but in the big picture it looked like the wind blasted the snow into the atmosphere or lower down slopes below common start zones.
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- East and northeast terrain below Scarps Ridge appeared relatively smooth compared to most alpine terrain.
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- Wind eroded slopes on the northerly side of Axtel.
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- The slope on the left is a highly wind eroded northwest slope above Wolverine Basin. The right side of the photo did not hold any Wind Slab formation.
