Small Slab, Castle Peak

NE face of Castle Peak, late morning. Steady SW wind blowing 5-10 mph. Significant and fresh rime ice had developed on the ridgeline trees, indicating a steady SW wind and new snow transport over the over the last 24hrs. New snow accumulation= 4"-6". Wind pockets up to 12". Perfect conditions in this zone for shallow wind slabs.

We have noticed significant settling over the last few days in the snow we received a week ago. So we were less concered about the deeper week layers that still exist. Our primary interest was the behaviour of the new wind transported snow received in the last 24 hours. We traversed out to the ridge just east of the peak to test the surface stability of the new snow. Our first ski cut on the ridge landed on a old slide path (which likely ran duing the previous storm). A 6" deep slab of new snow propogated over the old slide bed surface 40' wide and 100' long. We reapeted the ski cut a couple more times, outside of the old slide path and saw very little movement.

Another skier had ski cut the ridge 100 yrds. from us with similar results to ours.

We speculated that any surface instability was localized, however, we heeded the warning sign and moved down to a different choice of terrain. Later in the day 6 skiers dropped into the same location that we had tested with out causing any affect. For the remander of the day, we saw very little movement from the 15 skiers cycling laps in all zones.