Dense New Snow and Settlement on Tamarack Peak

Reports of a natural avalanche in the same spot as one of the persistent slabs earlier this month drew us to Tamarack Peak to investigate. The avalanche turned out to be a wind slab that had failed during the storm on 12/27. It failed at the base of the storm snow and did not step down into older snow. Click here for more details and photos on this avalanche. 

Our tour of the Tamarack area continued. We hunted for buried surface hoar lingering in sheltered spots. We looked for signs of leftover storm snow weaknesses. We checked wind-loaded test slopes to see if the wind slabs remained fragile. Despite our thorough search for continued instability, we saw no signs of unstable snow other than the wind slab avalanche mentioned above. Snowpit tests did not produce unstable results, ski cuts and kicks did not trigger any cracking, and digging deeper into the snow, we found a primarily right-side-up snowpack. Snowpit tests next to the wind slab avalanche also did not indicate lingering instability. We saw signs that the storm snow had already started to settle and consolidate in the form of settlement cones around trees. 

Large cornices had formed above many wind-loaded slopes. Even though we had not seen any instability, we decided to give those a wide berth.

The surface snow in this area was supportable, consistent, and soft.