Wind Affected Snow on Mt. Judah

We toured up Mt. Judah looking for surface hoar and wind-affected snow. In the more sheltered near and below treeline terrain, we found some patches of surface hoar in open areas. In most places, this surface hoar had already been knocked over and it was not well developed. These sheltered areas also held 20 to 25 cm (8-10 in) of soft and unconsolidated snow on the surface. This soft snow did show some signs of facetting but it was not as well developed as the near-surface facets seen at other locations along the Sierra Crest this week. We could feel the December 12 rain crust below the soft snow by probing with our poles and it was easy to find with hand pits. Both of these methods indicated that it was slowly decomposing. 

As we climbed higher into more exposed near and above treeline terrain, wind effects became obvious. On the windward aspects (N-NE-E), we found a mix of scoured surfaces, sastrugi, lingering soft snow, and old firm wind slabs. In areas where the E and NE wind deposit snow (leeward NW and W aspects), hard stubborn wind slabs lurked. We chose not to travel in steeper more wind-exposed terrain due to firm scoured surfaces existing on some slopes and hard wind slabs on others. We did find some small W facing wind loaded test slopes to experiment with, but ski kicks and ski cuts did not produce signs of instability. One of the test slopes did have some small debris blocks at its base that looked 12 to 24 hours old.

Throughout the tour, we found soft snow available for transport on all aspects and noticed the ENE winds were moving snow along the ridges.