We stayed in mellow <30 degree, terrain today to avoid the avalanche danger. We experienced several thundering collapses, especially in more wind affected terrain. Amy was parked on her snowmobile as I stepped off the trail to dig a pit and she felt the snow collapse on her snowmobile. The riding was great and all the wind smoothed all the terrain out. The new snow was medium density and rode very well.

We dug a pit on a North facing slope around 7500 feet in elevation. The slope was 24 degrees with a total snow depth of 55 inches of total snow on the ground. In this area there was only 24 inches of snow on top of the Faceted layer.

The Shovel shear test produced an energetic shear at the buried surface hoar level about 2 feet down. Compression tests failed at 11 and 12 taps. We got a full propagation failure at 11 taps during an Extended Column test. YIKES!!!

See the video below for the the test results.