Observation: Lanes Leap

Today's travel was from the Guardsman's gate to Pk. 10420, hoping to get a better understanding of our upper snowpack. The new snow from Friday and Saturday provided great riding conditions and remains cold and soft. Plenty of graupel can be found roughly 8 inches beneath the surface. Stability tests produced failures at the interface of the graupel and the old snow surface with hard force (CT24 PC, ECTN26). Weak snow from the Holiday storms was found 2 feet beneath the surface, underlying a hard slab of previously wind-drifted snow from the first few days of February. There is currently more than one layer that can produce an avalanche, and to complicate things more, the snowpack varies quite drastically depending on location. This structure seemed to be the medoid of our spatially variable snowpack, and I plan to dig continuously to a depth of 2–3 feet along my tours to gather more info.

Excellent riding conditions can be found pretty much anywhere. Even the solars held soft snow and didn't appear to be taking on too much heat.