Haven’t spent to much time on W facing high elevation terrain this year so it was time for a look. Skied W, NW facing slopes between Cardifff Pass through Holy Toledo and down past the Halllway. We took time to dig a pit on Holy Toledo at 9500ft, NW facing there’s a pretty deep snowpack in this area for this time of year but we wanted to see what was at the bottom of it. Most of the pack is a fairly uniform one finger slab with faceted loose snow at the surface but at the bottom there is still 8 to 10 inches of facets/ depth hoar that is dry, loose and doesn’t seem to be gaining much strength. The slab is fairly stout and thick and in my opinion it would need a thin rocky weak spot, a big load of new snow or maybe a larger trigger such as a snowmobile to collapse it. As soon as we moved down canyon to the more W facing lower elevation slopes the facets layer was way less pronounced and the slab was more relaxed, and snow pack depth was quite a bit less.

photo: surface hoar that’s pretty prevalent in protected areas and a quick video of the snow pit, showing what the slab is resting on.