Cracking

Rapid Warming

Poor Snowpack Structure

The upper elevations have the hard wind slabs (mostly unsupportable) sitting on facets, cracking under the weight of a person, but not propegating. Upper Mill B starting zones did not have the deeper snowpack found at some of the higher elevations in the Cottonwoods - shallow and super faceted beneath the wind slabs. West southwest facing - traversing the wet facets was sort of funky - the same old story of lots of weak snow with no slab, but it had that feeling that if you found just the right conditions you could almost get a wet slab. These slopes will be strong once they cool. And a repeat of the early January high pressure snow conditions at mid and lower elevation, shady slopes - a widespread, deep layer of well developed facets, with the added feature of surface hoar on top in the drainage bottoms.