We rode in the Franklin Basin area today. We dug several pits on east and northeast facing slopes at around 8800 feet. Pits were all on slopes between 30 and 35 degrees. the shovel shear tests did not result in any clean shears. Out of all the compression tests we did, we only produced one failure at 21 hits down 15 inches, And we got failures 4 inches above the ground between the old faceted snow layer and the new snow from this week. Those failures occurred at between 25 and 26 hits. The Extended Column Tests failed 4 inches from the ground also at 25 hits and was a full propagation ECTP25 but the failure was so subtle that I could barely tell that it had failed.

The shallow snowpack is as cohesive as I've seen it in a few years, and we felt very comfortable riding 30-35 degree slopes.

We did find significant patches of faceted snow around rocks and buried shrubs as would be expected with a shallow snowpack. There was also a fair amount of frost on the trees and any exposed shrubs. Hopefully the very cold forecast doesn't destroy the decent snow that we have. The riding was good and we didn't tag any rocks.