Icy Crust on W-SW Tamarack, Good Coverage Chickadee Ridge

Took a tour around Tahoe Meadows, beginning by going up the South/Southwest face of Tamarack to the Forest Service road. As the forecast indicated, this slope was especially crusty, likely from a combination of wind and melt the previous day. There were some areas where there was still open water; in these locations, the ice was especially slick and hard, making skinning difficult in these isolated locations. Wind was especially strong, but there was not a whole lot of active wind transport in the area (at least before snowfall). Given the poor conditions, I did not spend much time here.

I spend the late morning/early afternoon on the other side of Mt Rose Highway, lapping the ridge above Tahoe Meadows (Chickadee Ridge). Snowpit at the southern edge of the meadows (lat/long location) had a rain crust at at 15ish cm depth, with the snow above consiting of small, icy crystals that were not easily packable. Applying pressure to the back of the column with the shovel yielded a fracture at about 5ish cm depth. I couldn't identify anything distinguishing the snow above and below this fracture. There was no icy crust on this side of the road, north aspects below tree line yielded "chalky" snow. This area was likely well protected from the warmer temperatures the previous day. Snowfall by 1 PM was about 2-3 inches with visibility still poor.