Below 8,400 feet there was 3-6 inches of complete glop. Probably the wettest snow I've seen yet this year. Despite a liberal application of skin wax at the start of the tour the snow stuck horribly to my skins and made uphill travel difficult. At 8,400 feet there was a sudden change to medium density snow. The new snow was slightly upside down, with a 2 inch deep capping of lighter density snow on top (see photo of hand pit below.) We toured the exact same route on Tuesday and noted the formation of thin crusts on NW, NE slopes, as well as a very thin zipper crust on lower angle N facing. Today I dug numerous hand pits which showed these crusts preserved with still damp snow below on WNW and NW facing. Hand shear tests released the new snow with moderate pressure an top of the crust layer. Also of note was that the top 2 inches of lighter density snow seemed poorly bonded to the denser snow below. Not a problem today and I would imagine it will settle out pretty quickly but maybe something to keep an eye on with additional snowfall forecasted for tomorrow.

These density change layers seemed to be less present above 9,000 feet as snow depth increased and overall density got lighter. The Pleasant Creek area did very well with this last storm, seemed like at least a foot of new snow and probably more in places. Both our skintrack and ski tracks from Tuesday were completely covered up up high. I was surprised by the light density of the snow above 9,000 feet, I would put it on the light end of moderate. I was also surprised by the apparent lack of wind effect in areas I traveled considering the high recorded wind speeds overnight. New snow seemed well behaved for the most part, although it did want to sluff a little bit in steeper areas. It was also evident that some steeper areas had sluffed naturally during the storm.

On my exit the snow below 8,400 was already hardening up with the dropping temperatures.