Waterhouse Peak observations

I toured Waterhouse Peak this morning to have a look at snow surface conditions following yesterday's rain and snow, the old Feb 14 facet layer, and to look at surface wet snow development under today's warming. Cloud cover cleared quickly this morning with most areas free of clouds by 9 am. At that time only a few lingered over the east shore of Tahoe. By 11 am these clouds were almost fully gone will full clear skies over the rest of the forecast area.

Ascending Waterhouse Peak, there was a mix of supportable and breakable crust below about 8,400 to 8,600'. Above 8,600' there was about 1 cm of new snow with smooth and supportable travel conditions. I stopped on my ascent to dig a pit on a well shaded below treeline NW aspect just above 8,800'. At this location the old Feb 14 facet layer was mostly rounded and clearly gaining strength with repeatable ECTX results.

Up on the summit ridge I saw very light amounts of drifting snow under the moderate speed NW winds. Test slopes along the ridgetop that had been wind loaded yesterday held pockets of wind drifted snow up to 4 inches deep. Ski cutting these test slopes gave no indication of unstable snow.

On my descent I was able to trigger some small rollerballs on an open, sun exposed ENE aspect at about 9,000'. Further down I stopped and performed a testpit just above the pit from March 8. The location of this pit was at 8,700' in the ENE aspect avalanche terrain located due west of my first pit on the other side of the main north bowl of Waterhouse. Here my test results targeting the Feb 14 layer scored ECTN and PST 87/100 end. The depth of the Feb 14 layer here was about 15 cm below the snow surface and below a crust/facet/crust combo (see photos of structure in the March 8 observation).

The indications of developing surface wet snow instability were the only indications I saw of of any avalanche problems in this area today.