Faceted Loose

Wind Crust

Melt-Freeze Crust

Walking the W ridge towards 10,420, there's patchy melt-freeze death traps on the south side, and about 2 feet of faceted dry snow on the north. A variable wind crust was present on northerly aspects, although there weren't any signs of real extreme loading in the near past. We dug at ~9800 feet, N facing, ~25 degrees. HS 63cm: There was old October snow here, which was only a few centimeters of damp facets, capped by a decomposing melt-freeze crust. Next was preserved graupel from the beginning of the big November storm, and all that snow has settled into a decent slab. The newest snow on top of that (maybe 20 cm? up here) has almost completely rotted out, 1-2 mm facets. The uphill travel was tricky, a little slippery in places. Mark said something about skinning in sand... good analogy. Results: ECTP24Q3, ECT28Q3, ECTP23Q3. This all failed in the October facets, below the melt freeze crust. Full propagation, but very rough. Our other group got a bunch of ECTNs in a pit adjacent to our with a touch more E to it. Nevertheless, I think our travels and digging just further confirms it all... the snow is deteriorating rapidly, and we'll probably see a good round of avalanches with this next storm. Of note, though, were the damp 2mm facets at the ground... at least it's not 5mm dry depth hoar!