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Weather Summary

Overcast skies with occasional snow flurries interspersed with short periods of diffuse sun. It snowed about 1-2cm while we were out in the afternoon. Winds picked up by early afternoon, with periods of blowing and drifting snow observed at all elevations. Most effective wind transport was probably going on at upper elevation.

Avalanche Observations

Map of listed avalanches: Avalanche Observation Comments:

Our visibility was limited, but we observed older avalanches in most of the avalanche terrain that we could see. A lot of this is not obvious from the road, I suspect that may be the case in much of this zone. Impressive to see crowns on just about every slope steeper than 33. Many small paths produced R3-5 slides (mostly D2).

Snowpack Observations

We dug at/near the crown of a large avalanche that likely failed at the tail end of the second big storm (sometime around 3/15). This was a ENE-facing slope at 8,200'. This avalanche failed on a well-developed layer of facets down 80cm (2/18 weak layer). These facets were about as weak as I've seen while digging in the past week, with a significant difference in hardness between the weak layer (4F-/F+) and the overlying slab (P at base). This produced widely varying ECT results. One test failed and propagated during standard loading steps (ECTP22). The other two did not, but propagated with addition hits from the shoulder (3 additional shoulder hits, and 23 additional shoulder hits).

I was surprised how bad these facets still looked. I think this is the sort of setup where triggering a large slide is the most likely. The overlying slab was a little thinner than in many locations, and the weak layer hasn't been as compressed/squished.

There is 10-15cm of new snow sitting on the 3/23 crust here.