Snowpack observations from Red Lake Peak

Moderate to strong southwest winds kept the snow surface frozen on exposed slopes above treeline longer today than the last few days. The slopes that were scoured by the east winds and have less recent snow on them had supportable bases below 1-2 inches of softer wet snow. On the more sheltered slopes near and below treeline the sun made the recent snow heavy, wet, and sticky. It still needs to go through more melt-freeze cycles to become good corn snow. Some skier triggered pinwheels occurred on the sun-exposed slopes up to 9600'. Some smaller roller balls did occur beneath rocks on a nearby SE facing slope at about 9000'. Several natural and skier triggered point-release slides have occurred in this area over the last few days. While driving back from Carson I saw several other point-release slides on the S-SE facing slopes of Echo Peak, Mt. Tallac, Maggies Peak, and Jake's Peak. Most of these slides looked like they had occurred on Tuesday or Wednesday. The largest of these slides were on Echo and Jake's.