We made it out for some turns today in the Tony Grove Area. We found about 16 inches of snow in the campground area with 20-22 inches at the top of the beginner bowl. There was about 3 inches of new snow overnight capped with an 1/8th inch thick Rime Crust. It was rimeing heavily all morning, sticking to your goggles, clothes and yes, especially the snow surface. We still had a good time riding the breakable 1/8th inch crust but others were struggling to ride. Slightly better riding was found to the East of trees where the rime had not affected the snow surface. Regardless, it is still nice to get out in the snow.
We dug an avalanche pit on a 25 degree slope on a NNE aspect around 8800 feet. There was 20 inches of total snow depth in this location. There were a variety of layers with a hard 2 inch crust as a base, 10 inches of faceted snow, and the top 8 inches was newer snow from Sunday’s storm and last night. It was all capped with that thick rime crust. We did a shovel shear, several compression tests, and an extended column test (ECT). The shovel shear and compression tests did not produce any significant results. The ECT test did fail at 25 and did propagate but it did not produce a clean shear (ECTP25) See Video. I wasn’t too worried about the riding today but with a significant load it could get a little spicy in the mountains.
PSA: The snow is getting deep enough in the campground that it is difficult to drive without getting stuck. We saw several vehicles digging themselves out. The snow had been drifting over the road and travel was pretty good up to the cattleguard then fairly difficult to drive to the lake. If we get much snow in the next two days, travel to the lake may get shut down.
