Sawatch

Avalanche

John Mackinnon ยท Feb 21, 2015

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Weather

Overcast skies with a few patches of sun, light westerly winds, light intermittent snowfall with some stronger bursts.

Snowpack

15-20 cm of new snow since yesterday. Fell on a variety of crusts and older faceted snow. HS averaged 70-80 cm and was mostly weak and faceted in sheltered areas below treeline. Areas that have seen previous wind-loading had over 1 meter of snow but older slabs have completely faceted out. Depth hoar at the bottom of the snowpack is sintering and forming chains but is still 4F hardness or less. CTs produced repeatable progressive compression (or squashing!) results at the the new snow/old snow interface on small faceted crystals on NW aspects BTL. New storm snow is showing a bit of cohesion but is F hardness.

Avalanche

We did not observe any avalanche activity.