Headed up to ski Scotts Peak north facing, was hoping that the wind crust had broken down and would provide decent skiing, was somewhat right this time, except for the bottom half of the run became fully unsupportable, faceted top to bottom. Fairly decent snow pack in the top portion had some strength and at least 4ft of snow on the top pitch, halfway down in the thinner snow pack area started falling through to the dirt, pure sugar with no structure, could not dig a pit if you wanted to, all the facets would keep filling the hole as fast as you could dig them out. Have seen this sort of scenario a lot in the past 2 weeks, some strength in the upper part of the slope and pure junk mid slope. Think this is why a lot of the avalanches recently are mid slope [ No Name, No No Name, mid slope pocket on Cardiac Ridge, and so on]. Photos.
Track on Scotts Peak, you can see were I started to punch through the pack at the mid slope roll over.
The whole ugly mess on Scotts.
Decided to walk around the bottom of the drainage to take a look at No No Name thinking I might be able to ski the Hang fire from the top but wanted to get a look from the bottom to see if it seemed like a good idea. Ponder for only a minute and decided like Drew noted in his ob from there that it might not be prudent with the large amount of hang fire hanging directly above the crown, and a concave upper bowl above it that looked like it might have the same wind load in the middle and thin spots on the sides and being there solo. Still wanted to take a closer look walked up the bed surface within 20 ft of the crown and took some pics of the stress fractures on all sides of the slide, and skied down on the flank. Photos.
Stress fractures.
Large amount of hang fire above the slide.
Proceeded up the ridge to No Name Bowl to see if the faceting of the surface was worst than my last visit last Wednesday. No surprise it was, could get some good facet sluffs running without much coaxing. At this point in time seems like snow pits are sum what of a waste of time in my opinion, the snow pack is weak and if we ever get a decent load its gonna rip on the steeper slopes in the areas I've covered. Photos.
Facet sluff in motion.
