Fragile facets, Upside down snowpack, and wind slabs on Incline Lake Peak

Continuous wind loading during the day in this area had covered up the avalanches that were observed here this morning. Some chunks of buried debris could still be seen, but most of the crown lines had already filled in. This afternoon 2 main snowpack instabilities still existed. The first one was a density change between the heavy snow that fell last night and today and the colder, lighter snow below. it. Tests on this interface showed that it remained fragile this afternoon. Ski cuts on steep test slope also resulted in cracks or small fractures. The second weakness is the Dec. 2nd facet layer. In this area numerous tests showed that this layer has started to become easier to trigger. The only avalanche activity reported on this layer was from earlier this morning (details here).

Wind loading and cornice building continued all day in this area. One test slope near the top of Incline Lake Peak had snow covered debris at its base this afternoon indicating that it had already failed earlier. The cornices above this slope had already rebuilt and become large and fragile again. Small ski kicks several feet away from the edge would trigger large cornice collapses that involved several feet of cornice.

Pit profile: 9100 ft on a north aspect.

Photo: Second cornice collapse with buried debris from an earlier collapse in the foreground

Video: ECT on the two weak layers. Two other ECT 's performed just below this on resulting in sudden failure of both of the weak layers at the same time. One of them failed while I was isolating the block (ECTPV @ 159cm and 139cm - Q1) and the other failed on the 1st tap (ECTP1 @159 and @139 Q1).