Warming Snow and Whumpfing in Deep Creek

Lower Deep Creek looked like a winter wonderland with cold snow on the trees and surface hoar in the meadows. While skinning up the road, we would step off into the meadows and untracked snow. As we pushed our poles through the recent snow we could feel the softer facets below. We also wanted to see if we could trigger whumpfs in these low angle meadows. Turns out we could. We triggered the largest one of the day in a north-facing meadow at about 7000 ft (photo 1). This collapse propagated along the weak layer for about 20 to 30 ft from where we triggered it.

We continued up mindful to stay in lower angle terrain and out from under potential avalanche paths. Above 7200 ft, we came out of the valley inversion and things got warm. Snow started sticking to our skins as we moved between the sun and the shade. At about 7700 ft. we triggered some smaller whumpfs (again on the Dec. 11 facet layer). We traversed along a low angle bench east of the Sierra Crest. Looking up at the crest we could see debris from a small wind slab avalanche that likely occurred during the Thursday storm (photo here). Snow on the shady north-facing slopes was still cold so we stuck to those. An open slope at about 8300 ft, provided a good opportunity to dig a pit. We found a snowpack structure similar to what we have seen around the region with recent more consolidated snow on top of the softer weaker Dec 11 facets. Tests at this location indicated that the facets have started to adjust to the load above them. 

On the way down we triggered one more whumpf in low angle sheltered north-facing terrain at about 7400 ft. Once we got back down into the valley temperatures cooled off and the snow was cold and dry under the inversion.