Mt Judah

I toured up Judah this afternoon to check out the conditions and see if I could find a spot high enough and sheltered enough to hold some of the buried facets from the earlier storm cycle.  

Warm sunny hike with crusts of various thickness and supportability in exposed areas, and surface hoar in sheltered areas.

Above 7800' cold supportable snow existed in shaded and sheltered areas.  

I dug a quick pit at about 8100 feet on a NE facing 26 deg slope.  HS 85cm.  The bottom 20cm was a teeny bit faceted, with small grains that easily formed a snowball.  I couldn't see any difference in grain shape or size at the top of the layer or in the middle.  Above this layer the new snow had filled in with a few density changes, and a surface layer of 1-2mm graupel and decomposing surface hoar above about 10cm fist hard new snow above a suportive crust.  Snow surface was soft with ski penetration 5cm and boot penetration about a foot.  The faceted base layer was unreactive in this location, with no results from a compression test CTN and a shovel shear STN.

I didn't ski this slope but a group right behind me did, and there were numerous tracks on similar aspects.  No reports of settling or cracking or wumphing in talking to other groups.

Low tide with multiple crusts and hazards on the ski out.