Normal Caution

Same

The danger is mostly low, and people have been skiing a lot of terrain up there with no incident. I agree with the forecast rating of mostly low danger, but I'm still noticing a couple things that are worth mentioning. On 2/1 I reported near surface faceting occurring in the top 6cm of the snowpack on a West aspect. Today I dug on a 33 degree North facing slope at 11,200 ft. and found this same layer of near surface facets, but they are showing signs of rounding. The near surface facets on the N face are sitting under a 2cm thick pencil hard wind crust, see the photo below. Also, 29 cm below the surface there is a layer of rounding facets that failed under a compression test CT23 PC Q2. This layer was reactive to stability testing on Saturday 2/4 as well. There is 25 cm of 1F density slab sitting on top of this layer. All of this is worth mention, however I'm still not super concerned about this layer right now. People (including myself) have been putting tracks all over the place. Today's avalanche forecast indicated moderate danger at high elevations that face NW through East, and I agree with that assessment given the presence of this weak layer.