Shallow Snow and Facets in the Wildcard Area

A shallow snowpack with lots of rocks, stumps, areas of bare ground existed on the NW-N-NE aspects in this area. Some area of continuous snow cover did remain on the sheltered slopes. Snow surface conditions ranged from soft and unconsolidated to firm and icy. Below the surface the snowpack consists of mostly weak facetted snow. Some layers of facets are more dense than others. Tests and data indicated that it may still be possible for a fracture to travel through the weak layers but that triggering such a fracture has become difficult. Some variability still exists in the data with some tests still indicating that fractures can travel through the weak layers (see the videos below). If/when more snow falls on top of the current snowpack these persistent weak layers could reactivate and cause some avalanche problems.

Photo: A panorama looking out at Relay Peak, the Proletariat, and Mt. Rose. Note the lack of snow on any SE-S-SW aspects. ON some of the E aspects snow cover has thinned significantly as well.

Video 1: An ECT indicating that fractures are difficult to trigger and the they may not travel very far even if they are triggered.

Video 2: A PST showing that in the unlikely event that a large enough trigger could get a fracture started it may travel through the snowpack.