Shallow Snow, Rocks, and Facets on Silver Peak

Significant melting has occurred since Dec 7 in the Silver Peak area. Numerous rocks, stumps, shrubs, and patches of bare ground existed on all aspects. The sun exposed southerly aspects barely had any snow on them. Above 7400 ft more snow existed on the northerly aspects, but the snowpack still only measured up to 40 cm in depth. On these northerly aspects large, loose, sugary snow (Dec 7 facets) exists in the bottom half of the snowpack. Above this the snow was not as well consolidated or slab like. Some of these upper layers have also started to facet in this area. While some snowpit tests still indicate that fractures can travel through the weak Dec 7th facets, other adjacent tests indicated that fractures would not travel far. On a larger scale, most areas I traveled through did not collapse. However, my weight on the slope did cause the some minor collapses that only traveled a few feet away from me in some areas and one collapse traveled out about 60 ft on one low angle, N facing, open slope at 7400 ft. Overall observations in this area showed a high degree of variability from one slope to the next and even on the same slope.

Photo 1: Large well developed facets near the base of the snowpack on a N aspect slope at 7800 ft.

Photo 2: A halo of small cracks around my skis that occurred when the facet layer collapsed. Two steps later I triggered the collapse that traveled about 60 ft when I stepped on a shallower area of the snowpack above some rocks.