Drifting snow and weak cornices on Mt. Judah

We toured the W-N-E slopes of Mt. Judah this morning. Partly cloudy skies early this morning gave way to increasing cloud cover and off and on convective snow showers by late morning. Moderate speed SW winds were continuing to blow and drift moderate amounts of snow in near treeline and above treeline areas. Air temperatures were below freezing.

Breaking trail we quickly could feel a storm snow density change below our skis, about 1. 5 to 2 feet below the snow surface. Higher up on a NNE aspect at around 7,950' in near treeline terrain (noted lat/long) we performed an ECT on this layer. It scored ECTN-18 at the interface of 1F hard storm snow on top of 4F hard storm snow. We encountered no signs of storm slab instability on this layer.

We stomped on numerous wind slab test slopes, easily collapsing sizable sections of cornice, but not creating any slab failures. We mostly just sent cornices sections rolling down slope. We observed ongoing drifting snow over cornice areas with stiffer powder conditions in the wind exposed areas than in the wind protected areas below treeline. Wind slabs were clearly present, but we did not trigger any wind slab failures. We also did not engage with the largest cornices or most heavily wind loaded slopes.