Went out to find instabilities, but failed. It seems like the wind has loaded mostly where 12/7 is not well developed, and 12/7 is present where the wind has not been loading. However, recent activity in the Boulders show that I was just in the wrong place.
Clouds and visibility came and went, and a light to moderate NW wind blew at ridgetop, still moving a bunch of snow (see photo)
# | Date | Location | Size | Type | Bed Sfc | Depth | Trigger | Comments | Photo |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
several |
SE face of Lorenzos drainage SE 10000-11000' |
D3 | SS | I-New/Old Interface | N-Natural | Looks to me like the whole bowl slid, from E to S faces. Hard to judge if it was just storm snow or 12/7 from just glassing from the highway. | |||
4 (?) |
Drainage between Gladiator and Senate SE 10000' |
D2 | SS | I-New/Old Interface | N-Natural | As above hard to say anything about crown depth or bed surface from the highway. |
Very patchy visibility, especially from Prairie Peak towards the Smokey crest, there might be a lot of slides I missed.
Surprisingly little wind effect on the ridge up to Prairie Peak, it does not look like the wind ripped through the trees much at all.
Pits between 7600' and 8800' E and SE gave no results on PST or ECT, even though 12/7 was present.
Around the summit there was clear wind drift, but I could not get hardly any cracking at all. One small collapse on the wind loaded S ridge, I would assume it was on 12/31 because it was not very "snappy". Windslab was F hard here. I dug a pit in the vicinity (see picture), 9400' HS 95cm. 12/31@60cm, 12/7@20cm as SH.
Slab above 12/7 F-4f, FCxr. No results on ECT, but got CPST25/100end and PST20/100end on 12/7, and CPST10/100end PST30/100arr on 12/31. There was a tiny bit of variation in stiffnes of the (very soft) windslab that could potentially account for differing results in PST and CPST on 12/31.
My takehome is that is is not as touchy as I expected, but 12/7 is still not to be counted out, and it is not impossible that the slides in the Boulders failed or stepped down to this layer.
Problem | Location | Distribution | Sensitivity | Size | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wind Slab |
|
Layer Depth/Date: 12/31 |
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Persistent Slab |
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Layer Depth/Date: 12/7 - 40-80cm down, 11/26 60-100cm down Comments: Reactivity of 12/7 varies widely, I did not encounter 11/26 today but I know it's out there |
I avoided avalanche terrain