Headed out today to look at the reminisce of the active day we had yesterday, and see how the sensitivity and snowpack structure looked today. As noted earlier, a bit of cloud cover seemed to keep the initial snow surface cool until about mid-day, and then the snow surface began to become damp. Until that time I did not observe any natural wet-loose activity occurring. It was right around 2 pm I started to note wet-loose activity coming off of cliff bands across Big Cottonwood.

While traveling, we could get some dry loose movement with ski cuts and we were able to kick off one small soft slab on top of the melt-freeze crust, but otherwise, we did not observe any cracking and collapsing while touring. Noted a lot of debris and bed surfaces on the usual offenders in that area from yesterday.

Another focus of the day was the snowpack structure, looking for the thin layer of facets that sat above the melt-freeze crust. This layer likely led to high sensitivity yesterday, which seemed to possess less of the usual warning signs (cracking/collapsing). We dug on both an SW aspect, and a true N aspect at 10,000'. In both pits, I was able to get a clean shear above the melt-freeze in a shovel tilt test (2-3 taps), but no propagation in my extended column tests. In the south-facing pit I was unable to find the facets, but multiple layers of melt-freeze crust with varying hardness in between the crusts. On the north-facing pit, there was on a defined crust with 1F snow below it - and a thin layer of rounding facets above it. So while I found this layer in the north-facing pit, I was unable to get any propagation in pit results.

I think the danger is decreasing for this layer, but I think there is a lot of spatial variability on the structure and sensitivity. It is worth paying attention too, and looking for until we get a few more days of consistently warm temperatures. It's not buried deep in the snow, and an easy layer to look for while traveling.

Southwest- facing pit wall - 10,000 - multiple melt-freeze layers.

North-facing pit wall- 10,000' - Obvious melt-freeze crust with the 2cm of facets above, marked with my crystal card

Activity noted while traveling today.