Today we went into the Southern Whitefish Range to do three things: assess new storm snow instabilities, get pounded by winds, and see how persistent weak layers were holding up. Results: new snow reactive, winds snapped trees, and we had repeated failures below 12/31 freezing rain crust.
- We were able to initiate a long shooting crack on a northerly facing slope below ridgeline.
- Propagation on extended column tests on SE, N, and W facing slopes. We conducted six tests, all of which failed on fragmented precipitation particles below 12/31 freezing rain crust.
- Cracking underfoot above ~5800 feet.
This all made our terrain selection easy. We avoided slopes greater than 35 degrees and did our best to stay in wind-sheltered terrain.
