Little Girls

Conditions were a mixed bag of rain crust below 3500, soft old snow, very hard (pencil) older wind slabs, softer  (1 finger-+) newer wind slab.  Signs of instability still existed, but were confined to newer wind slabs that were softer than the rock hard slabs that formed at the beginning of the wind event 12/5.  It still seems possible that a person could trigger an avalanche on wind slab that has been more recently formed, however the snowpack was stable in the majority of areas travelled.  The major surprise was the amount of soft snow above 3500' on Little Girls that existed in an are that would typically hold windslabs during other outflow cycles.  This soft snow will have the potential to form new windslabs during the next wind event especially if the direction of the wind is differnt than the previouys event, even if the difference is slight.

To be clear, the snow could not be considered good quality, but better than expected due to the strength of the recent winds.

Surface conditions consisted of a variety of old snow and wind affected surfaces.  A pit at ~4200' produced no significant results, but a general faceting of the mid snowpack was evident, and at an early stage.