Recent and current wind transport at Blue Lakes

Near the Hope Valley sno-park, there were still previous tracks visible under a few inches of snow, and not much new snow in the trees. Around the elevation of Charity Valley, new snow depths increased noticeably. I went to some of the steep, N facing slopes at 8000ft near Charity Valley and did several slope cuts with no results. An ECT did not propagate, consistent with the test slopes. I found 75cm of dense new snow above a 30cm thick layer of wet snow. The grains in the wet snow had not begun bonding to each other yet. 

Farther down the Blue Lakes road (which in several places was completely covered by large wind drifts), I got closer to the wind loaded ridgeline of The Nipple and noticed the riding quality deteriorating because of stronger snow at the surface above weaker snow. Once I saw shooting cracks, I stopped (pindrop) to look more closely and found 20cm of 4F hard snow above Fist hard snow, and got repeatable propagation on ECTs at the interface between the two layers. Here, the wet snow was down 100cm from the surface, and was a much thinner layer than at 8000ft.

Unfortunately, poor visibility prevented looking at the steep avalanche paths in this area today, but on the drive home, several of the paths in Woodfords Canyon had slid, displaying wet loose characteristics (though I couldn't see start zones to determine if they started as slab avalanches).