February 26
Broads and Mill B South
Elevations, slope angles and aspects:
5700-10400', angles approaching 40° north facing aspects.
Avalanche activity:
Graupel sluffs and wet activity from warming, limited to rollers and point release sluffs on sun exposed.
Slopes skied:
Sidewinder and crazy chute
Snow conditions:
An inch or two at the S curve increased to around a foot at upper elevations. The last snow from recent storm was all graupel, 2-4" totals.
Graupel was overlying dense storm snow, which was capping a lighter density layer, over wind crust. That layering provided easy trail breaking and some interesting skiing in the graupel rivers and pools, where it had rolled and sluffed down hill. There were wind drifted pillows along the upper elevation northeast facing shoulder of Dromedary, avoided on the down because they were a little large for ski cutting. Wind effect was also noted in other localized areas.
Weather:
Bluebird, with some occasional light swirling winds from a southerly direction.
Evaluation:
Snow was mostly stable with warming and localized drifting the primary concern. Dense snow bridging lighter density, producing isolated collapsing, should settle out with, forecast higher temperatures, leaving potential wet activity from warming, the primary instability concern.
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