Professional Observation

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Snow Stability

Key Points

Toured out of bounds from the top of J7 at June mountain today heading for the Negatives.

• Surface conditions were largely faceted, soft, and supportable while descending to Yost meadow. Despite the mostly soft and pleasant conditions, thin temperature crusts in areas with sun exposure and the plethora of old refrozen tracks kept us on our toes.
• We opted to climb and ski solar bowl in the hopes of finding sun softened pseudo corn skiing. Some superficial warming did occur today on SE exposures however, boot pen never exceeded 10-15 cm.  Surface conditions in this area are becoming quite 3 dimensional. More akin to sun cups than smooth corn skiing. Keeping with the food metaphors perhaps it would be best described as potato chip skiing.
• Surface conditions in northerly terrain below 9500’ are highly variable. In general, surfaces are faceting, and ski quality is improving.  However old wind boards will still take some time to break down completely. A plethora of old refrozen tracks, tree bombs, broken branches & other tree debris, and scattered areas of hard crusts are keeping the decent to four seasons quite interesting.
• Isolated areas of surface hoar were observed in shaded and sheltered areas. The most impressive of which measured over 1 cm in size and was found at around 8000’ in some sheltered north-facing trees.
• No signs of instability were observed on our tour today