Windy and Variable on Tamarack Peak

Stepping out of the car this morning at the Tamarack pullout, my partner and I both pulled on an extra jacket. The cold NE wind was biting. We could tell that the wind had touched all but the most sheltered areas because wind-sculpted surfaces were everywhere. We saw raised tracks, ripples, sastrugi on pretty much any open slope. Some slopes were smooth and scoured. As we climbed up to the top of Tamarack, we could see the winds blowing snow across the ridges and scouring slopes. Along the summit ridge, we found some small wind-loaded test slopes. One of them faced NE and had a firm wind-packed slab on it from the combination of the previous SW winds loading the slope and the NE winds compressing the slab. This firm (1f) wind slab was about 2 ft thick. It rested on a softer layer (4f) of snow. We did a quick Extended Column Test. It broke on the 2nd tap from the shoulder and the fracture went all the way across our column (ECTP 22). We could not cause any cracking or signs of instabilities with ski cuts or kicks. The other test slope faced SW and had a thin wind slab (3-4 inches) on it that had been deposited by the NE winds. In our ECT on this one, the fracture did not propagate across the column (ECTN 18).

We retreated back down into more sheltered terrain using smooth and supportable wind-packed snow. Surface conditions included punchy wind crusts, shallow soft snow on top of supportable snow, and firm smooth wind board. In the most sheltered areas, we did find some areas of consistent shallow soft snow. We also saw settlement cones around many of the trees in near and below treeline terrain. During our tour, we stayed above 8800 ft. We saw a dense heavy layer of snow below the shallow soft snow, but we did not see an obvious rain crust like the one seen on Hidden Peak yesterday.