It was severe winter weather in the high country this morning. We started off with a little sun early in the morning. By noon the winds were howling from the west, transporting any snow available for transport. Just after noon, it was snowing hard and filling in tracks quickly. We headed out by 2PM so I am not sure what happened after that.

We dug a pit on a NNE facing, 31 degree slope, at around 8700 feet in elevation. There was around 68 inches of consolidated snow on the ground. The faceted snow near the ground has completely healed in this area and was not reacting to any of the tests we performed. The shovel shear test revealed several clean shears throughout the snowpack. Compression tests produced several failures in the upper 18 inches of snow. The most notable failure was on a layer down 18 inches from the snow surface which failed at 17 taps. The Extended column test did not produce any failures that propagated.

We felt pretty good about the tests and did not observe any other red avalanche flags. The winds are building up cornices and wind slabs that will be of a concern for a few days.