NE wind but no blowing snow on Talking Mtn

We toured Talking Mtn today to have a look at recent NE wind transport, snow surface melt on S aspects, and to see how well shaded N aspects were continuing to escape surface melt. NE winds along the ridgetop were strong, giving me the feeling that my baseball-style hat would blow off if I did not have my hood on. Signs of recent scouring and redistribution of snow on the ground over the past four days of NE winds were readily apparent. Refilled skin tracks, wind pillows, and sastrugi were all present on the ridgetops and in any large open areas below treeline on N aspects. Some wind scoured N aspect open areas were impressively low on the peak, only a couple of hundred vertical feet above Echo Lake.

While signs of recent scouring were widespread, very little of this snow had drifted and deposited as wind slabs onto the S side of the ridgetop. Where we did find wind drifted and deposited snow it was only very small pockets and no more than 2 inches deep.

Not far below the ridgetop on S aspects, snow surface melt was occurring with about the top 4 inches having previously undergone melt-freeze. At 10:45 am we found about 2 inches of surface wet snow on top of a still supportable 2 inch thick crust.

On the well shaded due N aspects in wind protected treed terrain, we found 2 to 3 inches of unconsolidated recent storm snow, still unaffected by melt or wind sitting on top of the Feb 19 rain crust.

We did not encounter any areas of instability on our tour today. We saw numerous areas of old loose wet instability from the past 1-2 days but none new today.

We also noticed while driving Hwy 50 the crown, flanks, and debris of what may have been an old wet slab avalanche from sometime around the Feb 16 timeframe. This was located just to the N of the hwy at the prominent corner with the artillery protection structure near the base of the E side of Echo Pass. The bed surface was on an E aspect at about 6,700' overlying granite slabs. Unfortunately, we were not able to capture it in a photo.