Storm Slab on Incline Lake Peak

We skied at Incline Lake Peak this morning. Part way up, we dug a pit at 8700 feet on a north facing slope. We only isolated the column down 35 cm. Our only results were ECTP4 at 6cm down (Photo 1) breaking on a storm slab. We would see this lay become more active throughout the day. We also conducted a couple shovel tilt tests to look for instabilities around the new/old snow interface and possible buried surface hoar. We did two of these tests and saw no failures at the new old snow interface. The storm slab layer, that broke in our ECT, did break in both tests. Near the summit a single kick at a small test slope broke easily within the new snow (Photo 2). While ascending for our second lap we came across two 50-foot-wide skier triggered avalanches (Photo 3) on a rollover below the ski track. The crown was 6-8 inches tall. The bed surface of this avalanche was within the new snow interface. Kicking at less exposed parts of this slope easily yielded similar storm slab failure.  One the second lap, around 2pm, we observed a noticeable increase in wind speed and could feel the snow in non-treed areas becoming wind effected. While the slides we saw were minimally destructive and comprised of very a soft slab, we did not feel the need to see how that might change with more wind and snow being added to the mix.