Wind Drifted Snow

Increasing Danger

As noted above, wind slabs are the biggest concern right now. Winds were mainly from the south and southwest. So be aware on northerly slopes. So far wind slabs are small and somewhat isolated, but they could be more of a problem with forecasted wind and snow throughout the week.

Persistent Weak Layer

Same

We dug a pit on a 32 degree north facing slope. The pit revealed the same graupel/facet layer that Eric and I identified last Thursday on a high elevation NW slope. The snow was a bit deeper in today's location and the buried weak layer is 47cm below the surface. This layer failed on a compression test CTM17 Q2. We also performed an extended column test and the layer did not fail. See the photo below of the layer in question. This layer still exists, but like last Thursday was not super reactive to stability testing. We used this test slope to make a decision to ski lone pine. It is worth mentioning the snow was very deep where we dug (210cm) and lone pine has slid previously this season, so is of course not as deep. Heading up lone pine we probed with our poles to find some sugary snow maybe 18 inches below the surface. This was not seen in our pit with the exact same aspect. It makes sense to find near surface facets on lone pine considering that it slid already in mid December. A more shallow snowpack is typically a breeding ground for facets. There wasn't really a consolidated slab on top of the facets so we decided to ski the slope anyway. I think the little wind slab we kicked off was also a good test of these facets as it did not step down into them. If we get more snow this week, or wind continues to deposit snow on lone pine and other similar slopes I would stay off. Any of the NW through NE facing slopes that have slid previously will probably resemble the snowpack in lone pine. If it hasn't slid previously it should more closely resemble our pit which we all felt good about.