Recent avalanche activity on Carson Pass

Multiple avalanche crowns and debris were obvious from the car while driving up Carson Pass along the ridge to the south. These slides appeared to occur midday Sunday and had several inches of snow on top of them and the crowns were partially buried under new snow. 

The slides were a mixture of Wind Slab and Loose Wet. While there were Wind Slab crowns and flanks visible just below ridges, there were also debris piles that appeared to originate from a wet cornice break or wet snow falling off a tree (tree bomb), and in some instances these were combined. Regardless the temperature changes during the weekend's precipitation were clearly evident in low density snow above and below a rain crust near the surface.

Compression Tests adjacent to a crown resulted in CT 3 (SP) down 9cm on 4mm stellars. ECTN results on the same layer, with the crust just breaking but not propagating. 

Photo 1: A few inches of soft snow, then a breakable crust, then more soft snow. The amount of new snow and the strength of the crust varied. 

Photo 2: Small chunk of cornice broke but didn't propagate on slope below. 

Photo 3: In some areas breakable crust and collapsing soft snow around it created a sinking "snowshoe" effect while skinning. 

Photo 4: There were multiple similar avalanches that occurred yesterday along this ridge. This is one of the larger ones. My pole is showing that the debris is still relatively soft. 

Photo 5: Backlit cross section of snow adjacent to avalanche crown. The rain crust is about two inches below the surface just above the first lighter band of snow. The lightest band of snow is another 7 inches below that. 

Video: Small test slope well below a ridge with a skin track undercutting it failing while skinning (apologies for vertical video).