Public Observation

Observation Details

Observations

Started our tour at 9:45am with clear skies above us. Looking to the west and also towards June and Mammoth, there was plenty of cloud cover as today's storm was approaching. We skinned up an existing track out of Lundy Canyon towards Mount Warren with winds coming out of the south/southwest at 5mph with gusts in the range of 20 to 25mph. The gusts were moving snow around significantly and creating 1 to 2 inch windslabs on leeward sides of ridges. We hiked up low angle hillsides to the north side of a rock formation that gave us a little protection from the wind. ski penetration was around 15 to 30cm with some areas deeper. We dug at pit at 8776 feet NE aspect, 22 degrees, with a height of snow at 125cm. Two CT's revealed pretty clean fractures at 72cm from the ground. This 72cm layer was probably from the existing surface layer before new snow from this week came down. It looked like a rounded cluster or possible beginning of a melt free cycle. The snow above this layer was sliding off of it cleanly at 13 taps. Overall, it seems like layers will bond well with time. The facets were really starting to round out at the bottom 30cm.

We were very cautious all day to stay in low angle terrain as we could feel a lot of different layers of snow with our ski poles and knew that existing instability was present. We saw no instability under our feet nor did we see any avalanche activity or history around us.

Signs of Unstable Snow