We made it out to play in the sunshine and powder today in the Northern Bear River Range. The snow coverage was super varied throughout our travels. Trailheads are still bleak. Upper elevations are looking better but still harbor rock bombs that are ready to blow up any passing snowmobile. We tiptoed on the weekend's snowmobile tracks deeper into the range and witnessed many uncovered rocks with pieces of A-arms and plastics scattered about. (Not really, but I'm sure it happened). We dug 2 separate pits at about 8500'. The first pit was facing northeast and had a grand total of 4 feet of fairly settled snow in it. Compression tests yielded failures at 6 taps (14" from the surface) and 14 taps on faceted snow on top of the November crust about 10" from the ground. When I performed an extended column test I had a failure at 14" from the surface at 5 taps. (ECTN5) I continued with the taps and got the result of ECTP15 Q1 at the weak layer above the crust. This made me think twice about the lines we chose to ride today. Especially with the winds that have been raging from the west for the last few days.

Eric dug a pit at 8500' facing South East. His pit was much shallower with only about 30" total snow. His compression tests yielded failures (2 tests) at 3 and 5 taps (6" from surface) and also failures at 21 and 24 taps just above the Nov ice layer. Extended column test resulted in ECTN (6"from the surface) and again at ECTP15 (Q2) at the ice crust.

Ridgelines were ugly...lots of rocks and most of the snow blown into fetch zones or the midwest. The first 4-5 turns were on hard sastrugi. Not cool. But, off the ridges the snow was settled and creamy. All in all, a fun day in the mountains.