Storm and wind instabilities at Powderhouse

We began our tour by looking for buried surface hoar in the flats at Grass Lake, and could not find it. The snow above the old surface was Moist and 1F hard. Shovel tilts at Grass Lake showed lingering storm instabilities from 36 hour snow, and a new instability from more recent snow close to the surface.

On the way up, we avoided avalanche terrain by climbing between the Powderhouse bowl, and the drainage that divides Powderhouse from Waterhouse. We stepped on the downhill side of buried boulders, and got results when we first undercut them (video). Fracture depths coincided with the layers we found earlier with shovel tilts.

As we gained more wind loaded terrain at around 8600ft, the snow surface noticeably felt more "slab like" and stomping near tree wells produced cracking (pic), and hand shears near the cracks also showed lingering storm instabilites from 36 hour snow and a shallow wind slab instability.

Just east of the summit (pindrop), we did 3x ECTs with mixed results. On a less wind loaded feature, the ECT did not propagate but a shovel shear on the remaining column resulted in a clean and easy shear under new wind slab, about 20cm down. On a more wind loaded feature, one ECT had similar results and the other propagated under the new wind slab.

Winds and snowfall rates picked up significantly around 2pm. Crossing Grass Lake at the end of the day, new wind slab produced shooting cracks even in the flats.