New Snow and Wind on Lincoln Ridge

We showed up to Yuba Pass this morning with 4'' of new snow at the trailhead.  As we traveled up to higher elevation terrain, we found up to 6'' of new snow. Snowfall ended around mid morning. In below treeline northerly aspect terrain new snow was deposited on top of old near surface facets. Here the hand hardness of the new snow at F hard was not very different from the faceted snow a 4F- hard. Informal tests showed no reactivity of the still very soft storm snow slab in the wind protected below treeline terrain we traveled this morning.

Temperatures were below freezing with strong NE winds blowing along the top of Lincoln Ridge. The storm began last night with strong SW winds and evidence of previous wind loading was present with deeper areas of wind blown snow on NW-N-NE aspects.  Most of these aspects that had NE wind exposure (near and above treeline) had already been wind scoured back down to previous firm crusts as winds switched to strong NE early this morning.  Wind drifts were present on the SW side of the ridge that were up to 1' deep from the blowing snow.  Very limited cracking was observed in any of these wind drifted areas.  The new snow was deposited on a variety of previous snow surface conditions and provided a good refresh to the snow surface in this area.