Silver Peak Observations

We went back to Silver Peak today to look at snowpack changes post storm.  There was good snow settlement from yesterday with much less ski penetration today.  Trail breaking went from thigh to waist deep to boot top to knee deep.  The localized cracking we saw in the skin track went away with no signs of storm slab instabilities observed.  Signs of previous intense wind loading and scouring were everywhere.  Wind textured surfaces existed with a couple areas scoured back down to the Dec 22 rain crust.  We did see a small natural wind slab avalanche off of the N ridge that had been partially covered by additional snow and wind loading, most likely occurring sometime yesterday.  An ECT at the pin drop location showed no propagation results in the top 40cm of the snowpack with a 4F wind slab over F hard storm snow.  No other signs of instability were noted with wind slabs in this area.  The snow depth at the bottom of 2nd Fin around 7000' was 3 meters deep!