North aspect surface facets on Stoney Ridge

We went to look at surface facets on below treeline N aspects today for ongoing snowpack monitoring. The current setup is reminiscent of the Jan 4 PWL that lead to avalanche activity out of the Jan 16-17 snowfall event. At the present time, the current facets at the top of the snowpack are less faceted and have some necks between grains. While still low density, they are not as well developed nor as dry as the Jan 4 layer was.

We performed a Birkeland et al method loaded PST by building a 10 cm thick artificial slab on the snow surface out of disaggregated snow and allowed it to sinter for 30 min prior to performing the PST on the surface facets. After 30 min the slab sintered to 4F hard. The test scored PST 40/100 SF at 140cm and did not indicate likely propagation on the surface facet weak layer.