Powderhouse Observation

Snuck in a tour of Powderhouse Peak this morning before the full force of the storm arrived. I found 8-10 inches of new snow at the lower parts of the mountain. Older tracks were still visible under the new snow. While it didn't snow much for most of my time, the wind was definitely a factor especially as I gained elevation. Even in relatively dense trees there was noticeable wind effect above 9000'.  I kept my distance from the large cornices along the summit ridge. Near the peak the wind was strong and blowing a ton of snow which made visibility challenging. I kicked at a couple of wind slab test slopes and got cracking and a very shallow wind slab avalanche that occurred roughly 15' in front of where I was standing. The slope was quite short but the slab did propagate about 20' wide which was impressive given the small overall size of the slope. I did not observe any storm slab instabilities below tree line although visibility was limited and I avoided steeper terrain.

Photo 1: Not much snow was falling when I arrived around 9:00AM

Photo 2: Around 9000' the snow became noticeably shabbier due to increased wind effect.

Photo 3: Several of the summit ridge cornices are quite large and some chunks have broken.

Photo 4: I kicked the edge of the small side of a smaller wind feature and produced a slide about 15' in front of where I was standing.

Photo 5: Looking up at the thin wind slab that I triggered from the ridge on the lookers left.