High intensity drifting on Silver Peak.

We toured into Silver Peak today to have a look at new wind slabs and to perform some snowpit tests on the Jan 4 layer with an overlying slab of new snow. Blowing snow in open near treeline terrain ranged from moderate to intense. New wind slabs to 1 foot + existed in lee areas along ridgeline areas. We kicked at numerous new ridgetop wind pillows and found almost no cracking of new wind slabs. Snowpit tests showed ECTN results on the new wind slabs in this area. This was surprising given the intense drifting that we observed to refill our skin track after about 5 minutes.

While moving around in wind protected below treeline terrain on the lower portions of Silver Peak, we created some storm slab cracking up to 6 feet long that went down to the top of the Jan 4 crust. While this cracking we saw today was limited, it may be an indication of potential future storm slab instability on Thursday under more rapid new snow loading conditions.

We performed two ECTs and two PSTs on faceted snow below the Jan 4 crust, none of which indicated likely propagation today. The first tests were performed below treeline on a NE aspect at about 7,300' and the second set was performed at treeline on a north aspect at 8,000'. At the below treeline site, the weak layer was quite weak and faceted. At the near treeline site, the layer was stronger with more previous wind compaction and scouring.