Talking Mountain Observations

Headed to Talking Mountain to see how the new snow was behaving with the recent wind. The view from Hwy 50 showed that the south portions of the Becker/Talking ridge look melted out past Becker, so I skinned across Echo Lake. The contrast between the snow covered north face of Becker Peak and the almost entirely dry south face of Flagpole Peak was impressive. Folks were enjoying the soft snow near Becker and while it was a bit cold, rock climbing gear would be more appropriate for the south face of Flagpole.

Looking up at the open mostly treeless slide paths on Talking I could see some evidence of wind texture but the snow was uncohesive at the lowest slopes. As I gained about 500 feet, I started to encounter increasing amounts of wind slab. While most of these slabs that I encountered were relatively small they were numerous enough to potentially be problematic and I was avoiding areas where they may have been larger. Interestingly, I encountered wind slab within somewhat dense tree stands, albeit at least a portion of these trees had burned during the Caldor fire and were denuded of needles and some branches. While I had anticipated finding some evidence of wind slab on Talking, I found more than expected and what I found was fairly reactive. 

I did several ECTs looking at the windslab. These tests produced both ECTN and ECTP results depending on how cohesive the windslab was. The weak layer was new snow and occasionally there were large amounts of graupel visible. I didn't get any results on anything deeper than the new snow from Friday/Saturday. 

Moderate with occasional strong gusts of N wind were common. Skinning across the lake, the winds were randomly swirling from multiple directions. 

Photo 1: Looking up at the north side of Becker Peak

Photo 2: Looking at the south side of Flagpole Peak

Photo 3: Clouds arriving over Upper Echo Lake at 11:40am

Photo 4: Wind slab extending a few feet

Photo 5: Wind slab extending about 15 feet

Photo 6: Graupel buried under wind slab

Photo 7: ECTP 22