Strong mid to upper snowpack on N aspects and sun crust on solar aspects.

We toured north of Incline Peak this morning, assessing snow surface conditions and looking for any signs of the upper snowpack weak layer reported from Relay Peak on 1/11. What we found was thin, breakable sun crust on solar aspects, settled recent storm snow on northerly aspects, and very strong snow in the top 1.5 m of the snowpack. The morning started warm, followed by an abrupt air temperature drop of 5 degrees or so during the late morning to midday hours along with increasing cloud cover and increasing winds. We saw only very minor amounts of blowing snow in this area prior to our 1:30 pm departure. Snowfall had not yet begun at that time, be we could see the incoming storm providing snowfall on the Sierra Crest.

The sun crust was 1 cm or less in thickness and was found on the SE-S aspects up to our high point of travel at 9,700'. This crust was stiff enough to disrupt skiing quality. Moving over to northerly aspects, this surface crust disappeared. We encountered some areas of rime on the snow surface on northerly aspects, mostly near ridgelines above 9,200'. Deep below treeline and away from open areas on these northerly aspects we had no surface rime and quality ski conditions. Ski penetration into the snowpack was consistently around 10 cm.

We dug a profile snowpit of the top half of the snowpack (1.5m) at 9,640' on a N aspect in NTL terrain. We dug a second snowpit as a test pit of the top 1 m of the snowpack at 39.30617, -119.95507, N aspect, ~9,200', BTL terrain. In both pits, this mid to upper portion of the snowpack was strong and without layers of concern.