A snowpack only Mother Nature could love. Surface conditions are highly variable. Supportable wind board, facets, sustrugi, melt freeze crust, old tracks, etc. The low RH and major diurnal swings continue to drive the faceting process on northwest-north-east facing slopes. The lower the angle, the more faceted the surface. This has been well documented over the last week. What drives my speculation about how the next storms will play with this interface is how contiguous the facets are across terrain. In the areas traveled today, there were very few slopes that could be considered uniformly faceted across the entire feature. So perhaps the next storm will produce some avalanches on this near surface facet layer, but the problem may be more isolated to specific, rather than widespread like its predecessor. Ski penetration was 10cm in the most sheltered locations. Track penetration was only 20cm in sheltered locations. Watched some skilled snow machine riders navigate a variety of surfaces on steep slopes in upper Mary Ellen and Sinners. No instabilities noted.

Photo 1: North-East facing Baruska. Surfaces were edgeable and kept you honest in between soft turns.

Photo 2: Back of Devil's Castle, Pittsburg Lake environs. The solars are so corrugated that it seems anything will bond well to this. Coverage is looking more like April than January. Surprised to see vegetation starting to poke through. South and West were slow to soften due to light breeze throughout the day above 9000'.

Photo 3- Profile performed on NE facing slope in an open glade at 9250' yielded 10cm of faceted snow sitting atop stout mid pack slab. HS was 130cm. Profile was 80cm deep. No layers of concern noted in the profile tests. STH and CTN.

Photo 4- The sad state of the snowpack surface even in sheltered northerly. At least its only January.