Public Observation

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Followed an existing skin track up the south facing, north side of the road. Did not observe or experience any signs of instability today like others reported yesterday. Fairly strong solar effect, in spite of very cold morning temperatures, and noticed a change in the snow and experienced some clumping on our skins. Trees were shedding snow, and we did see a few isolated roller balls. We rode down a mellow, low angle line.
Decided to set our own skintrack to ride the north facing, south side of the road, next. We were aware that there were some bands of terrain just over 30 degrees. Experienced a small whumph just above the road, but continued uphill. A few hundred feet up, we began to experience large, loud whumphs and significant collapsing. Knowing that our skin track had travelled between terrain just over 30 degrees both uphill and downhill, we decided our safest route was to continue to the ridge top and traverse to an even lower angle descent. The collapsing was widespread and very freaky, but we did not observe any avalanches. Very grateful for good mapping apps and an experienced group that communicated well for a safe outcome.
In the end, it was a great day, but a good wake up call to the very unstable state of our snowpack.