Faceting in Elkford

Quick report

Weather

cloudy

Riding Quality

good

Snow Conditions

powder

Today in Mear Lake we found 40 cm of soft faceted snow over a generally shallow, faceted snowpack. The December 5th melt freeze crust was down 65 cm and no sign of a Dec 23 crust at this elevation. There was very little wind effect at the treeline and below treeline. We did not get any direct alpine observations but suspect isolated wind slabs directly lee of ridges. There were three older size 2 to 2.5 wind slab avalanches from southeast-facing cross-loaded start zones.

Snowpack

Depth

100

Obs Type

point

Site Aspect

N

Test Fracture

unevenBreak

Site Elevation

2100

Test Initiation

none

Foot Penetration

50

Test Failure Depth

0

Site Elevation Band

tln

Surface Conditions

facets, newSnow

Extended column test - no result (ECTX) Compression test - no result (CTN)

Avalanche

Avalanche Size

2

Slab Thickness

50

Number Of Avalanches

2-5

Avalanche Observation

moreThan48hrsAgo

Avalanche Occurrence Datetime

2024-01-14T20:00:00.000Z