Observations from Upper Blue

Much better riding conditions today than expected, expecially on shady slopes above 8000ft, where the most recently buried crust was weakest. We observed about 6" of new snow on top of this crust on sheltered slopes, and 12-18" of wind blown snow on top of it on lee aspects. On slopes lower than 8000ft, the crust was stronger and created challenging riding conditions. On sunny slopes below 8000ft, the top 30-50cm of snow was Moist to Wet. No signs of instabilities were observed today. Several +24hr old loose wet avalanches were observed, all limited in size to D1.

Pic 1: Informal tests like this shovel tilt, and numerous hand shears on the uphill side of snowmobile trenches, showed the recently buried but also collapsed surface hoar layer just under the newest crust. I think there may also be some near surface faceting at this layer. 2x ECTs did not propagate on this layer, nor did numerous slope cuts indicate propagation.

Pic 2: Warm temps have created a dense slab, so we purposefully undercut several wind loaded test slopes and worked progressively higher, but saw no results.

Pic 3: Another round of small surface hoar at the surface. This was observed more along ridgetops than in meadows.