Observations from Carpenter Ridge

We knew that facets existed on some of the northerly aspects in the Carpenter area. We chose to go there to look for any signs of instability concerning those facets. As we skinned away from our snowmobiles, we did feel and hear a small collapse on a N facing open slope @ ~ 8200 ft. We dug into the snow and found facets below the recent snow. The recent snow was fist hard at the top and became 4-finger hard near its base. The facets were fist hard. We did an ECT, but no fractures propagated across the column (ECTN). It was also hard to pull the block off the facets at the end of the test. We kept going up this slope weaving back and forth through similar terrain, and we did not feel any more collapses. 

Once we gained the ridge, we found wind-affected snow with some scoured areas and some drifted areas. We did not see any signs of current wind slab instability. However, there was still plenty of soft snow strong winds might blow around. The sun warmed up the SE-S-SW-W aspects enough for wet snow to form on those slopes. As this wet snow freezes tonight, the ensuing crust will make it harder for the SW winds to blow snow away from those areas.

We moved down off the ridge and kept looking for instability around the buried facets on NE-N-NW aspects. We probed in many areas, dug numerous hand-pits, and ski cut several test slopes. We did not find any more signs of unstable snow.

We continued back up and over the ridge to our parked snowmobiles and found more wet snow on sunny W aspects and breakable sun crusts on E aspects. Now that it is almost March, the sun climbs high enough in the sky that we also sow some minor wet snow on low-angle northerly aspects.