Sunny and Cold day on Tamarack

Today, we went to Tamrack Peak to check out new snow and wind slabs. We also thought we might see signs of warming snow on sun-exposed slopes. We found about 4 inches of new snow accumulation in sheltered areas. This snow remained cold and soft and had a thin graupel layer at its base. Conditions on northerly aspects felt like a winter day. 

We could see large cornices and wind-affected snow surfaces along the ridges, but we did not see any blowing snow. Ski kicks on small test slopes did trigger small cracks and cause small pieces of cornices to break loose, but ski cuts and kicks did not trigger any wind slabs on test slopes. When we dug into the snow on a near treeline N aspect, we found the surface hoar about 12 to 16 inches below the surface. We also found several graupel layers and density changes above that layer. None of these layers produced unstable results in our snowpit test at this location (ECTNs and PST 99/100 END on the surface hoar and PST 96/100 end on the bottom graupel layer). 

On the way out, we moved to S-SE facing slopes. The snow on these aspects had started to warm up and felt denser, but it was not wet enough to produce wet snow instabilities as of 2 pm at this elevation (above 8700 ft).