We rode in the Northern Bear River Range today and found great settled powder conditions with an excellent base. Nothing like the end of last week with blower storm snow but still great to get out in the sun this morning.

We did not notice any recent signs of avalanches but noticed small crystal surface hoar covering most areas that will be fun to deal with in this next loading event.

We dug a couple of pits today and found widely varying results.

Amy dug a pit at 8000 feet on a NNE facing slope. She found a total of 50 inches of consolidated snow. She performed shovel Shear, Compression, and Extended Column Tests and had zero results.

I dug a pit at 7800 feet on a NW facing slope (pictured below). There was a total of about 46 inches of snow. The shovel shear test did not produce any significant findings. I had multiple failures on the compression tests. I had a failure of the column down 14 inches on 11 taps. This failure occurred on multiple columns and failed on a hard to detect layer from between a few of last weeks storms. One column failed at 16 taps down about 30 inches and was a clean shear. Another column failed at 16 taps at the ground in the faceted snow from October/November. The extended column test produced an ECTN 11 at the layer down 14 inches. Then a ECTP 16 in the faceted snow at the ground level.

We stuck to mellow <30 degree riding today until the snowpack heals a little more.