Observations from Castle area

We went on an observation tour with students on an AIARE 2 course today. While we did not expect to find good skiing due to strong winds and anticipated firm conditions, but we were still able to find interesting snowpack observations to look at. Our plan was to stay low and below treeline under the south ridge of Castle to avoid firm, slide for life conditions on the steeper slopes above. NE winds were moderate to strong throughout the day and did not allow the surface snow to melt. Despite these firm conditions and strong winds we did contiue to find well developed surface hoar and near surface facets in sheltered areas. In areas that were more exposed, the surface crust remained supportable with minimal boot and ski penetration. Our profiles revealed a rather dynamic upper snowpack structure with 2 crust layers and small faceted grains above and below but with uniform, strong snow deeper down. snowpack tests showed repeatable failures about 50cm down on an unknown weak layer. All test had sudden collapse failures on the final round (21-30) of taps during compression tests, but all ECT's did not propagate across the column. An interesting note was to see a grove of trees that still had the December storm snow stuck to the trunks, and settlement cones close to 40cm below them, we came to the conclusion that this has indicated around 40cm of settlement in the snowpack since the last storm.