Mercury + Awesome
Snowpacksamuel.higgins · Jan 9, 2021 · Lizard
Quick report
- Weather
- cloudy, cold
- Ride Type
- denseTrees, steepSlopes
- Stayed Away
- alpineSlopes
- Riding Quality
- good
- Snow Conditions
- hard, powder
Spent a day in tunnel with a couple short laps into Mercury Basin and finished with a Beyond Awesome. Beyond Awesome ski out through the drainage gets a bit dicey but it’s manageable at this point.
Weather
- Avg Temp
- -10
- Wind Speed
- windSpeedCalm
- Sky Condition
- overcast
- New Snow24 Hours
- 0
- Storm Snow Amount
- 40
- Temperature Trend
- falling
- Precipitation Type
- none
- Precipitation24 Hours
- 0
Completely socked in, cloud floor was around 1900m.
Snowpack
- Depth
- 165
- Site Aspect
- N
- Test Fracture
- resistant
- Ski Penetration
- 5
- Test Initiation
- moderate
- Test Failure Depth
- 15
- Site Elevation Band
- tln
- Surface Conditions
- newSnow
- Test Failure Layer Crystal Types
- stormSnow
Dug a pit around 1900m on a N aspect, ~30 degree slope. Snowpack was showing a couple crusts down 40 and 45 ( New Years crusts) and a big crust down around 140cm ( early December). Minor faceting occurring on around the upper crusts and ~15cm of facets below the 140cm. A CT and an ECT yielded pretty much identical results. Both showed broken results on CTM13, down 15cm. Looked like just settled storm snow sliding off decomposing old snow. Nothing around the New Years crusts. Our CT actually showed results on CTH25 down ~140cm as well that were hard to notice but our column did very slightly collapse. This follows the regional trend and showed us that big avalanches are possible if instigated by a step down slide or cornice drops.