We made it out into the Northern Bear River Range today and found some excellent riding and beautiful blue skies. There were plenty of people out testing slopes today but we did not observe any recent avalanches. We kicked off a few small wind slabs as we jumped on drifts along ridgelines but no significant propagation and we were on slopes that were not steep enough to allow avalanches to run any distance. The snow softened up on south facing slopes around midday even with the cold temperatures but even those slopes were still riding well (better riding on Northern facing slopes). We dug an avy pit and this is what we found (see video for more details)
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Location & Aspect: Northeast-facing slope at 8,800 feet, 30-degree angle.
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Snowpack: Total depth 80 inches. 24 inches new snow (Wednesday storm), 8 inches from last week, with a weak faceted layer ~32 inches down.
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Compression Test: Failures at 24" interface on 19 and 21 taps; failures at 32" faceted layer on 22 and 24 taps.
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Extended Column Test: Full propagation on the faceted layer at 24 taps. ECTP24
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Surface Conditions: Wind transport on upper ridges; wind slab cracking on test slopes; denser powder since Wednesday storm. Slight sun/rime crust on south slopes by midday.
Overall it was an amazing day in the backcountry. The avy danger is coming down but if you happen to get on an area with thinner snowpack where you can affect that weak layer the slide could be large and destructive. Be safe out there!
