January 8, 2014

Observations – Arctic Valley

Obvious signs of instability:

Weather:

  • Generally light SE winds with some moderate gusts
  • Cloudy skies with some very light snow at times
  • Temps in the 20s

Surface conditions:

  • The good: supportable wind board and pockets of square powder (surface facets)
  • The bad: breakable wind board

Snowpack discussion:

A few collapses in areas like this while climbing out of the NW Gordon Lyon bowl:

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The above snowpack profiled and assessed:

Gordon Lyon

Two ECTs failed with propagation on isolation (the second is pictured below):

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The weak interface (bottom of facet layer on top of decomposing melt-freeze crust):

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Peak 4 on Tuesday:

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