Observations from west of Mt. Lola

We rode terrain to the west of Mt. Lola today. We encountered a wide range of sky cover from nearly full sun to prolonged snow showers up to S2 in intensity. In this area there was about 8 inches of new snow on top of a firm melt-freeze crust on all aspects. Digging down, we observed the melt-freeze crust at up to 10 inches thick with residual wet snow below it.

There were light to moderate amounts of blowing snow with wind loading up to two feet deep in the most heavily wind loaded areas near ridgelines. Slope cuts on wind loaded test slope features produced some minor cracking up to 2 feet long with wind slab failure at around 6 inches deep. We saw one tiny natural wind slab avalanche below a heavily corniced NE aspect.