The welcomed return of winter brought all the elements to the guardsman pass area. We began our tour from the Guardsman Area Parking about 8am, traveling the pass road to ski the low-angle slopes off the BCC side of Jupiter Peak. We observed approx 6-8" of new graupel-laden snow capped with a ~2" of dense surfy cream. Morning winds varied between periods of light to moderate and ramped to strong winds at times near the ridgeline.

We expected to see multiple red flags throughout the day today, given the recent high pressure and weeking of the old snow surface, and experienced many large meadow collapsing, shooting cracks on test slopes, poor snowpack structure, and observed several wet point release on shady northernly terrain on our midday down canyon drive (poss. greenhousing during an ~11a-12p hole in the storm or just straight up warm temps).

Today, there was a lot we all expected and anticipated to see in terms of the redflags, and we did (as did seemingly everyone traveling in the BC today).

What I wasn't sure of was the snowpack structure on non-shaded slopes. Of note, we experienced large meadow collapses on southernly facing slopes that harbored old snow. Those sagebrush/facet combo kind of collapses. Digging a quick hand pit post-collapse (flat-a-lanche) on SW at 9,800ft revealed a 2mm MF crust atop the PWL buried facets. Enough connection here on SW to collapse large pockets of terrain.

Photo: pass road test slopes