Snowpit from Upper Mott Creek Drainage

Dug a pit in northeast facing, wind loaded terrain, in the upper portions of the Mott Creek drainage, below the Mott Canyon zones of Heavenly Mountain. Total snow depth was 2 m, and the area showed obvious signs of previous wind transport, as boot pen was 0-10 cm, and the surface was smooth. Winds were upslope in the area at the time, and had been for the better part of 48 hours. We were searching for the faceting we had observed in the upper part of the snowpack in other places throughout the forecast area, and to see how it was evolving. We found the most developed facets we had yet observed in this location, showing very obvious geometric structure, with size up to 1 mm. They also showed the most sensitivity we had yet observed, failing in a compression test, and propagating relatively cleanly with only moderate force. The rest of the snowpack was very well consolidated and strong, comprised mostly of small rounds, with the exception of one seemingly anomalous faceted layer almost a meter deep. However, this showed no reactivity in testing, and is probably being bridged by the multiple pencil-hard layers above it. As stated multiple times before, these facets will bear watching when our next snowfall arrives, but for now, are probably not continuous or distributed widely enough to cause much concern. Moving around the area of our pit, we kicked off multiple little chunks of wind slab on these facets, but the slab was not large or cohesive enough, and very interrupted by other wind features and texture.