Wind Loading

Cracking

Rapid Warming

Poor Snowpack Structure

There was a lot going on today. We opted to go for a circuit that covered many aspects today ultimately looking more atSW aspects were holding up and hoping for some hot pow up high. I did encounter a couple small reactive windslabs at treeline on S-SW aspects that broke out a little and in one case sent some cracks ~6 feet out. We dug a quick pit on a 215 deg aspect at 11,500 ft and found a 140-145 cm snowpack with the old January snow surface at 56 cm below the snow surface. Interestingly we found a very hard crust at that interface with a full ice layer (K+) in some areas that we couldn't always break through with our probes, but substantial spatial variabily in the hardness of that layer near out pit. ECT and CT tests down to that layer did not reveal any results and we were pretty satisfied that the upper snowpack is pretty well bonded to the old January snow surface. Although the snow surface needs a refresh, the solar aspects seem to be relatively stable right now unless we get more hot days. We did not see any true wet slide indicators today - no roller balls or wet point releases, just some really sticky snow in hot spots.