Zone: Northwest Mountains
Location: Upper East River
Date of Observation: 11/23/2020
Name: Zach Guy
Subject: Waiting for that snow…
Aspect: North East, East, South East
Elevation: 9,800′ to 11,700′
Avalanches:
Noted one small natural off of steep, cliffy terrain on Mt. Baldy (probably a sluff) that ran midday. We skier triggered a couple of sluffs that gathered a bit more volume than expected by gouging through a relatively weak snowpack on near treeline, shady aspects.
Weather: Broken to overcast skies. Pulses of S-1 to S2 snowfall, with about an inch of accumulation. Moderate gusts.
Snowpack: About 1″ of new snow was dense and bonded well to melt-freeze crusts on southerly aspects. On northerly aspects, we saw some shallow cracking in lightly drifted areas: early signs that the new snow could be reactive on the lower density, lightly faceted snow at the storm interface. No signs of instability today apart from sluffing mentioned above. Got into some steeper slopes with shallower coverage than previous outings and noted a weaker midpack with more pronounced faceting.
Photos:
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- 1″ cracking in a fresh wind drift.
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- Potential indicators of storm instabilities with tonight’s forecasted snow
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- D1 sluff on east aspect of Baldy
