Observation: High Ivory

Persistent Weak Layer

Decreasing Danger

Coming up towards the top of High Ivory there were stiff wind slabs on the West and NW facing slopes into the east fork of mineral. These wind slabs were a bit tricky to notice as they were covered in ~3"of new fluff. I was getting some cracking just off the ridgeline and was interested to see how unstable the wind slabs were. I tried to Isolate a column 3 times and all 3 times had failure and propagation with Q1 shear quality on isolation. The wind slabs were 1F hardness sitting on weak Fist hardness facets. These wind slabs formed from the East wind event from the morning of February 28th. The Faceted snow likely formed in one of the long periods of high pressure we had leading up to the last storm. I did not spend enough time digging around to say for sure when the facets formed. This location has a very thin and rocky snow pack leading to better development of facets. To me this location is not going to be very representative of some of the more heavily traveled location (ie west bowl) for powder skiing with this upcoming storm. However locations like Room of Doom and some of the less traveled areas that may be more exposed to wind and have a thinner snow packs I would be suspect of with significant new loading for the first time in over a month.