| Recent Avalanches? | No |
| Collapsing (Whumphing)? | Yes |
| Cracking (Shooting cracks)? | No |
Observation: Hatcher Pass
Location: Microdot shoulder
Toured up the sledding hill and across to the Microdot shoulder. Big whumphing on the sledding hill slope, variable snow conditions on the bench: Soft pow, supportable windboard, breakable crust, sea of facets all within a few dozen feet of each other. Quite a few slopes would start with deep soft snow, then halfway up transition to a few inches of soft snow over a wind slab, then transition back to deep soft snow at the top. Great day to stay low angle!
Obvious signs of instability
Weather
High clouds but the angle of the sun was so low we still got some sunshine! Temps in the high 20's and calm wind.
Snow surface
Variable conditions, but in most areas at least a light dusting of good pow - up to knee deep in good spots. Some ice pellets/graupel sitting on the surface at higher elevations.
Snowpack
Dug a pit at 4200 ft, north aspect, relatively low angle (maybe 20?).
Snow depth 85cm. Most of the top half was sugary snow, the middle portion of which had consolidated into a slab about 6" thick; this was sitting on top of a crust sandwich, with more sugar below all the way to the ground.
CT28 at basal facets; ECTX. When shovel shearing out the extended column it broke immediately underneath the rain crust.
The slab was not particularly hard and would crumble on contact, but was just cohesive enough to stick together under shovel shear. This might explain why it didn't propagate?
Hardness profile with crusts dug out