We wanted to get back out today to check out the results of yesterday’s 2.4 inches of water on top of a faceted snowpack. As soon as we arrived at Tony Grove Lake we found an extensive natural avalanche cycle. Many slopes around the lake, parts of Miller Bowl, and North Lower Beginner Bowl had all slid during the storm (See Pictures 1-3). I am sure there are many other slopes that slide but they were obscured so I couldn’t get pictures.
As we traveled up through the campground and skinned up the lower beginner bowl we noticed significant cracking along the skin track (see pictures 4 and 5), and heard many loud whoomphs while breaking trails. The wind and 12 inches of snow had filled in all the tracks from the previous days. It was blustery most of the day and it was moving the graupel snow around a fair amount between laps.
We dug a pit on an east facing 25 degree slope in the lower beginner bowl at around 8400 feet (see video). There was about 32 inches of total snowpack, with 12 inches of new snow on top of the rime crust from yesterday morning. Under the rime crust was multiple layers of faceted snow. Compression tests revealed significant weakness in those faceted layers. The first compression test failed at 3 taps CT3. and the second compression test failed on isolation several inches from the ground. We did an Extended Column Test and had a full propagation failure at 7 taps ECTP7. The failure was just a collapse of the column and it did not slide but it showed how sensitive the snowpack is right now. This is the same reason we were getting so many collapses throughout the day.
PSA: The road to Tony is ugly. There were 4 trees blown down across the road, they are all cut off and passable now. There were people stuck everywhere. One vehicle made it to the cattle guard but it looked like they were stuck many times along the way. For anyone hoping to get the the beginner bowls for some solitude, the snowmobilers already made it to the upper and lower bowls so untracked riding is limited (and we made quite a few laps :) ) Sorry!
