Lingering snowpack instability just below old/new snow interface.

We toured out to the NW of Incline Peak today and took a look at how the recent storm snow was stabilizing. In a snowpit at 9,640' on a NE aspect, we saw a problematic weak layer just below the crust at the old/new snow interface, similar to the one reported at a much lower elevation yesterday from Tressel Peak (Donner Summit area). Upon close inspection was an extremely thin layer of 1 mm barely faceted rounds just below a 1 cm thick sun crust/melt-freeze crust. We had consistent ECTP results on this layer with scores ranging from 13-23 taps. This weak layer is not very well developed but may slow post storm snowpack stabilization on NW-N-NE aspects. Based on these snowpit findings, we choose to descend sub 30 degree terrain.

Air temperatures at the upper elevations remained below freezing, but periods of strong incoming solar radiation, particularly during the morning hours prior to cloud cover development created a half inch to 1 inch thick sun crust on E-SE-S aspects up to our highpoint of travel at 9,650'. This will likely be a breakable crust tomorrow.