Wind Slabs on Mt. Judah

It felt and looked like winter on Mt. Judah today. It was snowing for most of our tour, and about 4 inches of new accumulated since this morning. In open areas, we encountered intense blowing snow and strong winds. Stepping onto wind-loaded test slopes triggered shooting cracks and wind slab avalanches. These wind slabs failed 6 and 14 inches deep on a density change between yesterday's snow and today's snow. One released 20 ft away when I stepped onto a less steep wind-loaded area connected to the steeper slope. We also saw several similar wind slab avalanches that failed naturally on the East Face of Mt. Judah. The cornices above these wind-loaded slopes grew larger today.

 In sheltered areas, this fresh snow remained soft and less cohesive. Pulling loose snow away from the old snow surfaces below was still easy, indicating that the new snow may not be bonding well to the previous snow surface. We dug several test pits to look for buried surface hoar in near and below treeline terrain. We found it about 18 inches below the surface on one sheltered N-facing slope at 7800 ft. We also found density changes and graupel layers in the storm snow above it. Tests failed on the uppermost graupel layer about 6 inches below the surface (ECTP3) but not on the surface hoar layer above the crust (ECTN and PST 20/100 SF). On more E-facing aspects at 7100 ft and 8000 ft, we did not find the buried surface hoar layer in test pits.