melt freeze crust Russian Roulette
Quick reportShe Shreds Mountain Adventures · Dec 11, 2023 · South Island
Quick report
- Weather
- cloudy, stormy
- Ride Type
- alpineSlopes, convexSlopes, denseTrees, mellowSlopes, openTrees, steepSlopes
- Riding Quality
- good
- Snow Conditions
- crusty, powder
We sledded around lots of different aspects and elevations playing Russian Roulette today in the 110cm snow depth between 2000-2300m. The melt freeze crust was about 7cm thick at 2000m and 3cm thick at 2230m. It posed as a sneaky ski grabber which resulted in a couple endo's and ski bushing replacements. Didn't see any signs of instability while out hooning but did see some old debris from the melt freeze cycle on a very steep slope. Dug a pitty at 2230m on a W-SW aspect. 30cm of new storm snow is bonding very nicely to the Dec 6 melt freeze crust (which is about 3cm thick at this elevation). Getting hard results on the Dec 1 surface hoar layer with a sudden collapse down 60cm. Bottom 20cm are unconsolidated facets.
Snowpack
- Depth
- 110
- Obs Type
- point
- Site Aspect
- SW, W
- Test Fracture
- sudden
- Site Elevation
- 2230
- Ski Penetration
- 0
- Test Initiation
- hard
- Foot Penetration
- 17
- Sled Penetration
- 40
- Test Failure Depth
- 39
- Site Elevation Band
- alp
- Surface Conditions
- newSnow
- Test Failure Layer Crystal Types
- surfaceHoar
We sledded around lots of different aspects and elevations playing Russian Roulette today in the 110cm snow depth between 2000-2300m. The melt freeze crust was about 7cm thick at 2000m and 3cm thick at 2230m. It posed as a sneaky ski grabber which resulted in a couple endo's and ski bushing replacements. Didn't see any signs of instability while out hooning but did see some old debris from the melt freeze cycle on a very steep slope. Dug a pitty at 2230m on a W-SW aspect. 30cm of new storm snow is bonding very nicely to the Dec 6 melt freeze crust (which is about 3cm thick at this elevation). Getting hard results on the Dec 1 surface hoar layer with a sudden collapse down 60cm. Bottom 20cm are unconsolidated facets.