Travel today was in mid elevation northerly aspects around Kessler Peak. This area didn't receive all that much snow during Jan 10-12 (my friends who skied in this area reported 30-40 cms) and it has settled to about 20 cms (8"). In my travels in this area - as well as adjacent Mineral Fork - this season I have been finding a generally thin snowpack with weak snow throughout the pack. Today I was finding 10 cms of well-preserved New Years facets underneath the 20 cms of recent storm snow. The presence and thickness of the Jan 8 rime crust varied throughout this area, although it seems to be more consistently present on north aspects. The presence of the rime crust isn't necessarily all that important as I was consistently finding the layer of faceted snow. The rime crust just makes the faceted layer ridiculously simply to identify.

The structure of the snowpack in this area is similar to what I am finding in Millcreek: A generally thinner snowpack where the New Years facets are much more advanced than in thicker snowpack areas (such as upper LCC.)

The big difference between this drainage in mid-BCC and in Millcreek has to do with storm snow amounts. Although the structure today was almost identical to what I was finding in Millcreek, today in mid-BCC there was only 20 cms of 4F settled snow on top of the facets. No cracking or collapsing. There simply isn't enough of a load to overload the weak layer. Millcreek received two to three times the amount of snow during the storm and the avalanche occurrences from this past weekend clearly indicated the storm snow overloaded the faceted layer.

Pretty simple for this coming Holiday weekend - I would not push slope angles in areas that had thinner existing snowpacks that were overloaded during the Jan 10-12 storm.

Not likely this video will be appearing at Sundance, but it gives a general idea of the snowpack structure in areas that had thinner existing snowpacks.