Snowpack obs from Needle Peak

We found a variety of snowpack and weather conditions on our tour today. The ridgelines were breezy in the morning and very windy in the afternoon, with a small amount blowing snow observed most of the day. Above 7800', the snow surface was cold, chalky and supportable on northerly aspects. Starting at ~7800' and below, things became more and more unsupportable. Deeper down in the snowpack we found the buried near-surface facets at 8800', 40cm down on a northerly aspect. This layer was about 3cm thick, weak (fist hard), and was most pronounced just below an obvious crust. In spite of this, it did not fail in any of the quick tests that we performed. This layer was found underneath a very stiff (pencil-hard) wind slab. We did not observe any whumphing, cracking or any other signs of instability today. The supportable snowpack gave way while touring through the trees, the best skiing was out in the open.  We saw numerous large slab avalanches (D2&D3) that had occurred during the last storm cycle, all located on N-NE-E wind loaded steep terrain features. 

Photo#1- Aggressive stomps only produced minor cracking of small corniced features. 

Photo#2- Obvious facets ~40cm down under a stiff windslab @ 8800'

Photo#3- Natural wind slab avalanche (D2) on a steep NE facing ridge, approx 48 hours old.