North of Lunch Rock Castle

Our AIARE 1 class toured up towards Castle Pass and on to lunch rock on the SW aspect of Castle Peak.  Through our tour we observed jets of snow being blown off exposed ridge tops in the area by the strong - extreme NE winds.  Even at the altitude of castle pass these winds were moderate with strong gusts and transporting snow in exposed areas. Although we did not find any evidence of new wind slab formation during our tour we did observe small areas of graupel pooling in lee aspects between castle pass and lunch rock.  We dug a pit on a sheltered north aspect and preformed a series of stability test that showed some weak interfaces in the upper regions of the snow pack but no evidence of these weak layers propagating through out multiple tests.