Facets and Shallow Snow on Chickadee Ridge

Today's tour took us to Chickadee Ridge. We found a variable snowpack with lots of rocks and other obstacles lurking either on the surface or just below it. The snowpack still remains ski supportable, but it keeps getting weaker as it endures more long, cold, clear nights. We found widespread weak snow, but still did not find any areas where a slab exists on top of the weak snow. We dug two snowpits side by side that highlighted some variability in the shallow snowpack, especially around the crust near the bottom of the snowpack.

We also found shallow soft snow near the ridgeline. This snow could be available for the winds to transport if we get stronger winds in the next few days. We also found some faceting snow below the sun crusts on the sunny southerly facing slopes. While it was soft and showed signs of faceting, it also still clumped together when squeezed. Overall, the snowpack is shallow and weak without a slab layer on top of the weak snow.

Skiing back down we stuck to low angle slopes and skied slow to minimize our chances of colliding with shallowly buried rocks or other obstacles.