Gale Force Winds and Heavy Snow on Castle Peak

We toured some simple and familiar terrain in the Castle and Andesite Peaks area to look at storm snow instabilities.  Gale force SW winds were transporting snow in the mid morning, even before the snow began falling.  The onset of the storm was slightly pushed back, with light snow starting around 10am in this area and picking up to heavy snowfall at 2''/hour shortly thereafter.  By midday, 4-6'' of new snow had fallen.  Small localized cracking occurred in wind loaded terrain, but wind slabs were stubborn to non reactive on small test slopes.  Ski cuts and cornice kicks on test slopes only produced small amounts of loose dry sluffing.

The Jan 4 rain crust was found and tested at 2 different locations.  It had anywhere from 1-1.5' of snow on top of it.  On a NW aspect at 8000', we got a ECTP-21 on the facets below the rain crust.  No other signs of instabilities were observed on this layer.

At our departure at 2:30pm, around 8-10'' of snow had fallen.  Winds decreased in speed on ridges and snowfall continued.