We rode in the Northern Bear River Range today and found very good fast shallow powder conditions above 8500 feet. We would only sink in 6 inches each turn but everything was filled in and smooth making for some very nice riding conditions. Visibility was great all morning with broken clouds. The cloud cover thickened around noon and a few flakes began to fall as we were leaving around 1:30.

We dug a couple of pits with somewhat variable results:

I dug a pit at 9000 feet on a Northeast facing 32 degree slope. The total snowpack was around 7 and a half feet deep. I did a shovel shear, two compression tests and an extended column test. I had failures during the compression tests at 15 about a foot down and a failure at 18 taps about 2 feet down on the interface between old snow and this last storm. The extended column produced a complete propagation at 18 taps down at the new/old snow interface ECTP18. The faceted layer at the ground was too deep to be reactive.

Amy dug a pit on a similar slope at 8800 feet on a NNE slope. Amy had compression test failures at 20 taps (CT20) 12 inches down. She had another compression test failure at 30 taps CT30 2 feet down. No failures on the Extended Column Test.

Everything seemed pretty locked down. We didnt have and cracking, collapsing, or woomphs all day. We didnt see any signes of instability in all the areas we rode.