Weak Snow and Wind Slabs on Lincoln Ridge

Driving up to Yuba Pass, snow level seemed to be hovering around 6500 ft. with mostly rain below that elevation. When we arrived at the parking lot at 6700 ft. snow was accumulating on the road. The new snow was wet and heavy. We started our tour and could feel the 12/11 rain crust about 2-3 inches below the snow surface. The old weak facets lurked just under the rain crust and we could easily feel them with pole probes. While skinning through more sheltered terrain we experienced minor cracking around our skin track. Only 2-3 inches of new snow existed in these sheltered areas and had not formed a large enough slab for more widespread signs of instability. Based on what we did see, the new heavy snow will form a slab on top of the old weak facets. If we get the forecasted snow amounts, that slab will likely be large enough to overwhelm the facets.  

Once we made it up to the ridge into more exposed terrain, strong SW winds were scouring the windward (SW) side of the ridge and building wind slabs on the leeward (NE) side of the ridge. We found a low angle wind loaded slope and dug a quick snowpit. As expected, we got unstable results with the wind slab failing on the old facets below the rain crust (ECTP 26). We continued up the ridge to a steeper wind-loaded test slope. Here we triggered 2 small wind slab avalanches with a few hard ski kicks above the slope. Our data confirmed what we suspected: wind slabs on top of facets are an unstable combination. We descended on low angle slopes back into sheltered terrain giving any larger wind loaded slopes a wide berth.