Another nice day out ski touring in the Central Wasatch today. On our ascent we noted a plumes of snow on high elevation terrain, the Pfeifferhorn and Red Stack, and throughout the morning felt intermittent low to moderate WSW winds. It was around 5 degrees when we started hiking.

We traveled up the solars in Upper LCC to the top of Days Headwall where we traversed the ridge to see what the wind had done to the different drainages there. We were surprised to find that most slopes did not look loaded or scalloped. We did find one sensitive slab which cracked and collapsed right on the edge of the ridge, but it was not connected to the slope as it rolled over into avalanche terrain.

Our east facing runs shared the same snow conditions as the what we observed in Days - relatively loose dry powder. Which we skied... and it was excellent.

On each lap we dug hand pits and probed the snow with our poles. We noted a huge variety of different crusts and facet interfaces. Generally there was ~12 inches of low density powder, either a suncrust or stout wind board, then loose faceted snow. We were curious about two things 1) how the variety of different layers we encountered will adjust to a load and 2) how seemingly huge of a factor spatial variability will come into play as we continue to load the snowpack. Seems like it's going to get interesting as we continue to build a slab.