Snowpit from Carson Pass

Location Name: 
South Side of Carson Pass
Region: 
Carson Pass Area
Date and time of observation: 
Tue, 12/01/2009 - 08:00
Location Map: 
United States
38° 41' 28.698" N, 119° 59' 17.2824" W
See map: Google Maps
US


Red Flags: 
Whumphing noises, shooting cracks, or collapsing
Observation made by: Public
Snowpit Observations
More detailed information about the snowpack: 

The site was in the rocks above the trees above the old Red Lake road. We noticed multiple loud whumpfs as soon as we left the trees and climbed the slopes above them. A few of the whumpfs also included shooting cracks, up to about 20 feet distance from us. Snow in our site was 44cms high and the slope was 30 facing due north. TSurf was -9c. Between 0-6cms there was ice and from 6-9cms there were 2mm facets. We didn't do any standardized stability tests, but we were able to make small slabs above our pit fail on the facet layer.

BTW we never took our skins off and still scraped a bunch of rocks.

Snowpack photos: 
Weather Observations
Blowing Snow: 
No
Cloud Cover: 
25% of the sky covered by clouds
Air temperature: 
Above Freezing
Wind Speed: 
Calm
Precipitation: 
None
Air temperature trend: 
Warming
Wind Direction: 
Accumulation rate: 
None
More detailed information about the weather: