Problem
New Snow
Trend
Same
Problem #1 Comments
Super variable mid-pack conditions on the upper elevation shadies these days. In some places, the december snow is still rounded and "1F" in hardness; ten feet away, and without an obvious terrain change, you might find a thin spot where the snow is rotten to the ground. In some places, this rotten snow has become damp during the warm temperatures of late. Strong NW-N-NE winds from about nine days ago drifted snow from the 1/10-1/12 storm into hard wind slabs and areas of "windboard;" where the snow from that storm blew away, wind-hardened snow caps loose, faceted grains.
The weakest snow I found today was in wind sheltered areas on N, NE and E facing slopes where the snow surface prior to the 1/24 "storm" was faceted. At times, while breaking the suicide skinner up Two Dogs, I was able to collapse the facets under the new snow, although the new snow lacked enough weight or cohesion to fracture and propagate. It appears as though these near surface facets became quite well developed during the recent cold snap, but today it looked like recent warm temperatures and high humidity have caused these grains to become damp and slightly rounded.
I have not been in the backcountry much lately, and I did not poke around enough today to develop a strong sense of what kind of pattern our various mid/upper snowpack weaknesses follow in the deeper snowpack areas, but generally my impression is that the weakest snow in the upper Cottonwoods is right beneath yesterday's storm snow. Again, this weakness will be most pronounced on slopes that do not have windcrusts, windslabs, or lots of calcified old tracks. In more radical, exposed, high elevation terrain, where strong winds last week thinned the snowpack, the snow is more consistently rotten; still, I think we'll need to hit or exceed the upper end of the forecast totals for the upcoming storms, or undergo a serious S-SE-E wind event, in order to see a widespread avalanche cycle in the cottonwoods.
Most SE-S-SW facing slopes are in a state of melt-freeze low tide below ~10,800 feet.
