A soft slab fracture in the 50cm of new snow in this east ridge of Hallett location on Feb. 13th, 2010.

We measured between 50 and 70cm (2 feet) of new snow in multiple locations between 10-11.5k in Rocky Mountain National Park on a Feb. 13-14th weekend Avalanche Field Seminar.  The mid snowpack between 10 & 12k in the Tyndall Gorge had a reactive, hard (P) but thin slab over large facets in lee treeline areas at approx. 80cm depths.  Our ski cuts and the recent avalanche activity were showing the most results in the significant new snow layer.

Above treeline in the Emerald Lake area, we found mostly ideal layering: F- 4F-1F-P  (top to bottom 150cm out of a 3m snowpack) and with a less cohesive surface slab in the new snow than in our treeline area samples.  In two days of touring through the Terrain Park and Tyndall Gorge, we came across only a few signs of recent slab activity (D1) in the new storm snow along with huge sloughs (D2) in steep terrain, especially in the Dragontail Couloir which ran sloughs of (R4, D2) multiple times during and soon after this weekend's 'red flag' storm activity.