East Wind and Variable Snow on Tamarack Ridge

We went for a short tour on the east end of Tamarack Ridge. We got to see several aspects and sheltered areas as well as more exposed areas. Some signs of settlement and consolidation existed in this area including settlement cones around trees. The storm snow was more supportable for travel than it was on Monday. We found soft snow on the sheltered northerly aspects. Once we wrapped around to more sun-exposed E-SE aspects we found a thin breakable sun-crust on the snow surface. 

As we neared the top of the ridge and traveled along the ridge in more exposed areas, we encounters strong NE winds that were moving snow from the N-NE aspects to the southerly aspects. We dug a quick snowpit on a small previously wind-loaded test slope and found signs of settlement and consolidation in the snowpack here as well. The slushy layer at the bottom had started to refreeze and the density changes from during the storm had assimilated into the snowpack. The snowpit showed a right-side-up snowpack going from denser at the bottom to less dense at the top. Snowpit tests did not produce unstable results (ECTN).