Walked Rock Canyon up Provo Pk. to get a look at the snowpack before this week's precipitation. Wind and solar have been the main players in affecting the last storm snow.

Lower elevations: Below ~7800' a F-to-K hard crust (0.5-2cm) formed on solar aspects and over the past week developed widespread NSF and isolated areas of Surface Hoar on top. This layer will be interesting to watch as storm snow falls this week and buries what remains of these persistent weak layers. Underneath the surface here much of the snowpack has settled and the deteriorated early season crust is the only notable layer in many locations. Small-grained facets that originally laid on this layer were unreactive in tests, 2 ECTX's and SSTH's that broke nonplanar within the crust 15cm from the ground in a HSn 68cm.

Upper Elevations: At this point nearly all terrain above ~9000' in this area is a product of wind scouring or wind deposit. Sastrugi, cross-loading, and hard ridgetop wind slabs made up much of upper Provo Peak and wind transport throughout the morning added to this. John Pikus's observed East Face slide crown had filled in and smoothed out with the Southerly winds and on the NW face downsloping wind hardened and textured the surface in all terrain down a few thousand feet. Here the danger of triggering one of these wind slabs, especially along the ridges where they are 10"+ and connected across wide loading zones, is still a possibility.