November 21st, 202211/21/2022
Today we went to have a look at No Name Bowl on the PC Ridgeline. This is a mid elevation NE facing, protected bowl at around 9400ft. I wanted to see how advanced the faceting has become in sheltered mid elevation N facing terrain and just like I expected the facet machine has been on full blast for the past week with cold clear nights and days. The most disconcerting part is that it is no longer just the surface or the top 4 inches that are faceted, it’s the whole snowpack. From the starting zone down to the dirt. Long running sluffs could be initiated easily in steep terrain and the sluffs would gouge down into the weak snowpack as the ran. It’s not like this everywhere. I was in the alpine on Saturday and the faceting was not near as advanced because of the wind damage that occurred last week. That being said the alpine has its own not so friendly set up, with a thin layer of facets on top of the windboard and facets forming below the wind crust. In theory this setup could hold more weight and produce larger avalanches when a load is placed on top. Nothing really going on right now except the weakening of the snowpack but when we do get a real storm all bets will be off.
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