I'm becoming increasingly concerned about the weak snow around, and particularly beneath, the rime crust which capped the last major weather event on a variety of aspects.

In our travels over the last couple days around upper Big and Little Cottonwood we have found variable snow surface conditions. In some sheltered areas the rime crust is hardly noticeable under the few inches of new snow, while skiing and in other areas it is all too apparent.

In our travels along the skin track and in the handful of pits we have dug, including yesterday in West Bowl on an East aspect and today on a SW aspect in Toledo Bowl, we have observed the surface snow calving away in small sheets in places, breaking below the crust. I've noticed it most actually skinning above other skin/ski tracks. Likely due to the shallow depth of the weak layer and lack of a cohesive slab it has been difficult to see conclusive propagation results in ECT tests though.

Still suspicious of the faceted grains under the crust today in Toledo we wanted to simulate what may happen with a new load, so to confirm our hypothesis that the lack of a connected slab is the issue, and not a dearth of weak layer, we carefully artificially loaded about 15cm of cohesive 'new snow' slab on top of an otherwise undisturbed ECT block. After waiting about 15 minutes to let it set up a bit we performed the test and had a result: ECTP3... Poor strength, Poor Structure, High Propagation Propensity and seemingly Low Friction. Granted this was one test, but still concerning...

It will certainly be interesting when it decides to snow again a significant amount. Avalanche activity may well be highly variable based on the presence of a crust or not, how stout the crust is in any particular location, and how much new load there is. This problem layer set-up could very well be with us for some time to come.