Casper north bowls
Quick reportmblandford95 · Jan 6, 2024 · Valhalla
Quick report
- Weather
- cold, sunny
- Ride Type
- mellowSlopes, denseTrees, openTrees
- Stayed Away
- steepSlopes, alpineSlopes
- Riding Quality
- amazing
- Snow Conditions
- deepPowder
- Avalanche Conditions
- avalancheConditionSnow, avalancheConditionSlab, avalancheConditionSound
We went and poked around the north bowls of mt Casper today and found excellent riding conditions, that will only get better as snow settles. Fsr access was good but any skin tracks across creeks and through the forest are still challenging but doable. Once the snow on the trees falls to the floor forest skinning will improve significantly. 20-30cm of dry snow fell at the road with up to 45cm higher up. Multiple sz1 avalanches naturally triggered at various stages of last night's storm were observable in the north facing bowl we skied. We experienced some whumphing, all around creek beds between 15-1700m.
Snowpack
- Depth
- 110
- Obs Type
- point
- Site Aspect
- N
- Test Fracture
- resistant
- Site Elevation
- 1900
- Ski Penetration
- 30
- Test Initiation
- easy
- Cracking Observed
- 1
- Test Failure Depth
- 45
- Site Elevation Band
- tln
- Surface Conditions
- newSnow
- Whumpfing Observed
- 1
- Test Failure Layer Crystal Types
- stormSnow
At 1900m on a north aspect, 33 deg slope. We dug to ground HS 110CM, HST 45cm. Compression test failure at 6 wrist taps 45cm down (new storm slab). No other failures, I stopped at 22 as there wasn't much column left. 45cm storm slab overlaying 10cm of previous snow on a crust. Below this crust there are a series of crusts seperated what seems to be facets that have undergone some rounding to my untrained eye (photos attached). The bottom 30cm is the most Sugary in quality (see photo). The snowpack was generally right side up with the one exception between some lower crust layers where hardness dropped back to four fingers, the layers above and below were both had one finger hardness.
Avalanche
- Trigger Type
- natural
- Avalanche Size
- 1.5
- Start Zone Aspect
- N, NW
- Avalanche Character
- stormSlab, windSlab
- Number Of Avalanches
- 2-5
- Start Zone Elevation
- 1900
- Avalanche Observation
- 12to24hrsAgo
- Weak Layer Crystal Type
- stormSnow
- Start Zone Elevation Band
- tln
- Avalanche Occurrence Datetime
- 2024-01-06T08:00:00.000Z
We saw evidence of numerous natural sz1-1.5 natural slab avalanches all in immediate Lee of the ridge line and one in a suspected cross loading spot. All seemed to be in the new Storm snow, all released naturally in the second half of the storm.