Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Winter Access Forum Westside Avalance Assessment

It's been a few days, but on Tues I went up with a teammate to see what this storm had done to our snowpack. The findings were surprising. We had great consolidation. 110cm of snow with one icy layer at 18" deep. What really surprised us is where we got our test to slide, both in compression tests, and with a Rutschblock. The snow slid both times on the ground. Typically I wouldn't dig to the ground, but we wanted to see everything. There was a soft, sugary layer on the dirt. The first test was only on a 27* angle and still slid, it took some effort, but still surprised us.
This was on a North Facing slope.

Just wanted to remind everyone to KNOW YOUR SNOW! Just because it doesn't slide on one compression test, doesn't mean it can't.

FYI, we deemed the snow stable enough to ski on and got some killer backcountry turns.

I'll be heading up once a week to check conditions and take measurements. If I can figure out how to put together a webpage I'll put up results there, otherwise I'll post anything here.

Thanks for the info.

Thanks for the fantastic info!

Could you give any more details on where you performed the assessment? latitude/elevation?

Sure thing. Pits were dug at Panther gap that first time. Wet snow on the south facing slopes pushed us to bail down instead of continuing to the peak. Elevations of pits between 8,600 and 8,800 ft.

I went up to Jordan Peak on Tuesday.
Fair consolidation through 150-160cm of snow. Sugary layer at 18" slid at the 16th hit. Non-planar. Slid again at 30" deep with a very planar, very consolidated layer on a sugary layer at 26 hits. Pits were dug at approx 9,100'
Temps were between 10 and 15 with high winds (30-40mph)from the N/NW. Windblown layers on South facing slopes. Didn't get any pictures of the pits, honestly it was just too dang cold to pull my gloves off and get the camera out.