Observation Date: 01/16/2021

Route/Location:
Skiing on the lower North face of Gash point proper.

Weather:

Wind:

New Snow:

Avalanche Activity:

Other Comments:
During a Saturday tour on the lower North face of Gash proper, we noticed that there was a rain or rime ice crust all the way up to the ridge top at 8,500 feet from the warm mid week storm. It appeared that the rain event from the January 12th/13th storm didn not penetrate the snowpack in a manner that would do much to improve lower snowpack stability. It was very windy, and new snow from Friday night had blown into sastruggi and shallow, unreactive slabs pretty much everywhere above about 7,000 feet. We did not see any recent signs of avalanches, and did not get any collapsing of the snowpack, even down around 6,000 feet in Sweathouse creek where the snowpack is weaker. We dug a pit on a NW aspect below Gash point proper at about 8,000 feet in sparse trees on a windward aspect. The snowpack depth was around 120cm, which is fairly shallow given the elevation. We got failures around ECT19N approximately 40cm down at a storm interface. We did not dig to the ground, so we didn’t get results from the facets near the ground. However, the structure is still present, but the strength of faceted snow appeared to be healing (starting to freeze together).

Observer: Brian Story