Stubborn Wind Slabs and Stubborn PWL on Mt. Judah

We toured the Mt. Judah area to look at newly formed wind slabs and monitor the Jan 4 weak layer.  3 to 5'' of new high density snow was in this area from the storm yesterday.  Evidence of strong to gale force winds were present with wind exposed areas scoured with limited to no additional snow for wind transport.  Cornices were reactive and on small terrain we were able to drop them onto slopes, but did not have any wind slab propagation or cracking.  Wind slabs were dense and stubborn and around 4 to 6'' deep.  We did get an ECTP-8 in a wind loaded test area right below an exposed ridge.  This had 1F hard snow failing on top of 4F hard less dense snow below.  Other than that test result, informal observations did not show any other signs of instabilities.

We dug a snowpit on a northerly aspect in below treeline terrain to look at the PWL.  Snowpack test results point to the Jan 4 weak layer gaining strength with most tests indicating that propagation is not likely.  This has followed a trend with other observations over the last couple days showing that this weak layer is adjusting to the recent storm snow load and becoming less reactive.