We found some great riding under the blue skies in the Central Bear River range today. The snow is consolidated and fast but still soft, making for some great turns. We were away from the Front range a bit and barely noticed any crust under the 2 new inches from the last couple of days.

Pit #1: we did some pit tests on a 25 degree, north facing slope at 8100 feet. There was a total of 42 inches on the ground. The top 12 inches of snow was two finger hardness then the rest of the snowpack was one finger with the exception of the faceted snow near the ground (see picture 1). There was no obvious shear point during the shovel shear test. The first compression test failed at the ground at 5 taps CT5. The second compression failed on column isolation… The column remained intact and was a nice consolidated snowpack (other than the facets near the ground) see picture 2. The Extended Column Test fully propagated at 25 (ECTP25) (See picture 3). The hard slab is bridging the faceted weak layer pretty well but if it did go, it would be ugly.

Pit #2: We dug another pit on a 24 degree north facing slope at 7500 feet. The snowpack was similar in composition to pit one other than there was a rain crust a foot down with some faceting under the rain crust. The Compression tests failed at at the ground at 4 and 13 taps (CT4, CT13). The extended column test failed at the ground at 24 taps. The culprit was again the facets near the ground, see picture 4.