Continued faceting on Lincoln Ridge.

We toured on Lincoln Ridge this morning to assess the progression of faceting since my last visit to the area on Nov 18. We traveled the same areas that I did 10 days ago and dug and snowpit in a location near the snowpit from Nov 18. As expected, faceting has continued to weaken the existing snowpack. Boot penetration has increased from 30 cm to 40 cm (12 inches to 16 inches) over the past 10 days. Increased faceting was observed, especially in the upper half of the snowpack. There are now chains of faceted crystals 5 to 6 mm long in the upper half of the snowpack that are dry and low density.

There currently is very little to no slab on top of the weak faceted snow in the area. I took advantage of this to traverse a traditional near treeline NE aspect avalanche start zone in the area. Despite the moderate exposure to previous NE winds, there was still dry faceted snow on the surface with ski penetration of about 10 cm (4 inches). This weak layer is waiting for a new snow load to create a slab on top of the weak layer and an avalanche problem.

As in many other locations around the forecast area, early season conditions exist in the area. Even though conditions are ski supportable, there are numerous rocks, logs, and stumps to avoid. The one SW aspect we traveled below treeline in the 7,000' to 7,400' range had undergone melt with areas of bare ground starting to appear. We encountered a thin, weak surface melt freeze crust in areas of both sun and shade on N-NE-E aspects that dissipated above about 7,300'.