Blowing and Drifting Snow on Tamarack Peak

Cold winds and blowing snow greeted us at the Tamarack parking lot. We immediately noticed that this area had gotten 3 to 5 inches of new, low-density snow. The storm snow was deeper than expected, but we could still feel the old snow surfaces with every step and turn during our tour.

We started our tour in a more sheltered area below the ridge where soft weak snow had existed before this storm. We dug into the snow to see how it was bonding and found that the new snow and the old weak snow were both soft and unconsolidated. Our tests did not show signs of instability at this time. 

Next, we headed up into the wind on the ridge. The strong NE winds were blowing snow away from N-NE-E aspects and over onto the SE-S-SW aspects. These winds had already scoured most of the new snow away from the typically wind-loaded NE aspects. We found areas where drifted snow had piled up to our knees, and we could trigger small cracks on S-SW facing wind-loaded test slopes. None of these areas held large wind slabs, and the drifted snow got much shallower just a couple of feet away from the ridge. A ski cut did cause the wind-blown snow to release on one steep SW facing test slope, but it was so soft that it fell apart as soon as it started moving. This release of wind-loaded snow behaved more like a loose dry sluff than a wind slab. 

We descended lower on S-facing aspects, and ski cut a steep slope in an area without wind-affected snow. This ski cut caused the soft new snow to slide down the steep slope as loose snow sluff.