The last couple of days have been incredible in the Northern Bear River Range backcountry. We have ridden north, east, south, and west facing slopes and all slopes are holding great snow. There is a rime/rain crust up to at least 9500 feet. This crust is buried under 4-6 inches of new light snow. You can feel the crust while riding but you cut through with no problem and the snow on top and underneath is great. The winds were howling yesterday along the upper ridgelines and transporting a fair amount of snow. Those winds settled down today and the blue skies this morning made for some amazing riding.

We dug several pits today to test for avalanche conditions. The first pit was on a northeast facing, 32 degree slope at around 8800 feet in elevation (see video). There was a total of 74 inches of snow in this area. The shovel shear test showed several layers that popped out with much more energy than expected. Compression tests showed easy failures at 5 taps from the wrist down about 6 inches from the surface. These failures occurred on a ½ inch layer of snow between two ice crusts (rime/rain) I got a couple of failures on the compression tests at 23 and 26 hits from the shoulder. These failures were down about 36 inches from the surface. However, I could not get any failures in the extended column test, as you can see in the video. The faceted snow at the ground in this area seems to be healing and was unreactive to tests.

The second pit was dug on an east facing 32 degree slope at around 9000 feet in elevation. The snow depth in this area was 59 inches deep. Compression tests failed at 21 and 24 taps from the shoulder and failed in the faceted snow at the ground. The pit had some rocks and faceted snow at the base but we were more concerned about the full column, scary failures at the ground. Luckily the Extended Column Test did not produce any failures (see Picture).

Based on these tests alone, we would say the snowpack is definitely healing at these upper elevation and deep snowpack areas but if you are in an area with a thinner snowpack, you could initiate a failure that could propagate into a larger, deeper avalanche.