Observation: Neffs

Dug 4 hasty pits at about 9070 ft; 2 NW facing and 2 N facing. One N facing was in a deeper snowpack area (deeper than my 125 cm pole could reach, the other in a thin area (~1m deep). Both NW facing failed easily with a slab over a clean shear about 60 cm below the surface and about 25 cm loose storm snow on the surface. I couldn't get the N facing columns to fail - they just fell apart. I was not on a major ridgeline and windloading was minimal.

The firm slab and clean easy shear on the 2 NW coloumns were disconcerting, but we saw no evidence of cracking, collapsing, or avalanche activity aside from benign sluffing on steeper slopes. We saw some very steep and bold lines below a major ridge line being ridden. Not sure what to conclude - there be dragons, but they were not active where we were.