Not Yo Mama's Storm Slabs

We went to Central Glacier Park looking for feedback from the new storm slab and old persistent slab problems. We found both, and a scary new week layer buried by the New Year's storm.

• Soft storm slabs 4-12 inches thick were easy to trigger on steep test slopes at middle and upper elevations. These failed within the top-heavy, up-side-down new snow and were most reactive where previous wind had thickened the slabs. We got cracking around our skis and occasional shooting cracks in the new storm snow. Slabs failed within the the snow between about 5,500' and 6,000' elevation.
• Barring any deep whumpfing on old persistent weak layers, we dug a test pit at 6,800' where the snowpack was just over 3' deep. We got consistent results on depth hoar near the bottom of the snowpack.
• The most exciting results of the day were between 6,000' and 6,800' on west, south, and east aspects where we found surface hoar preserved above near surface facets and under the very thin 12/31 rime crust. At 6,600' we experienced collapsing on the surface hoar and went to a nearby test slope. Stomping from a flat area near the break-over produced a D1 avalanche that propagated across the entire slope and remotely triggered part of the slope next door. The storm snow at this location had also been previously drifted.
• We did not see any recent natural avalanches, but visibility was poor.
• We stuck to low-angled, well supported, planar slopes and kept out of trouble.