The PWL is alive and active on polar aspects. I will continue to avoid avalanche terrain on the shady side of the compass. I investigated west facing slopes today to see if this is a viable strategy to avoid the PWL problem, but I found poor snowpack structure at 11,170' with multiple weak layers of concern. ECTP 22 on the 2/11 weak layer down 72 cm. I went for a second test to duplicate this result and got ECTPV (failed on isolation) on the depth hoar near the bottom of the pack. A third extended column test also resulted in ECTPV on the depth hoar. Recent stability tests from W-N-E have been getting results on the deeply buried facets/depth hoar at the bottom of the pack. The recent avalanche in Horse Creek also took out the entire season's snow pack. It's a bad set up, and we have to continue to excercise patience with our current PWL problem.

Some west facing slopes are melted out and have a very shallow snowpack. There is not an avalanche problem on these slopes. But if you get on a west face with a real snowpack, mulitple weak layers of facets exist beneath a slab. The only way to know is to probe for depth, and dig down to find the weak layers.