Castle Peak Observations

We went to Castle Peak to monitor the reported buried surface hoar that was responsible for multiple avalanches in this area on Monday.  The weather ranged from periods of warm sun breaks to snow and wind above 7500'.  Graupel made up the majority of the new precipitation type with around 3-4'' of new snowfall today.  We went up to around 8300' on a NW aspect and did multiple snowpack tests.  These tests showed some weaknesses in the upper snowpack.  A layer of rimed precipitation particles was down around 8-10'' along with a layer of buried surface hoar that was down 14-16'' below the surface.  These layers both showed variable weakness throughout 3 different snowpack tests.  Other signs of instabilities were limited to some minor localized cracking while skinning through terrain.  Northerly aspects have soft snow conditions with E-SE aspects having some soft snow over a semi supportable crust.  Snow along ridges exist for wind transport for tomorrow as wind speeds are expected to increase.