Quick report
Once entering Cardiff Fork from Cardiff Pass I realized that there was 40+ people in Cardiac Bowl and Cardiac Ridge, that's about 30 too many for my liking. Decided to head down canyon to High Ivory, kinda amazing that there were so many people in the upper bowls and no one down canyon a quarter of a mile. Pic, Cardiac Bowl.
Snow seemed well behaved today, you could get some sluffing on steeper slopes but they were not packing much of a punch today.
Dug a pit in the starting zone of High Ivory, about 10300ft NE facing, pit revealed 1ft new snow sitting on a 4" pencil hard wind crust capping the facets from the late November dry spell. The facet layer was about 3" in depth and non- reactive to compression tests, not enough load to collapse the stout and thick wind crust. Facets were fairly small grained and starting to round, but you could still make out some angles if you looked close enough. Suprisingly the small amount of facets at the bottom of the snowpack were smashed down to about a inch or two and damp enough to make a snowball with, not seeing them as much of a factor anymore. Total depth of the snow-pack was about 41 inches. Pics, snow pit, facets under the wind crust, damp facets at the bottom of the pack.
Still able to escape if you tried.
Snowpack
About 11 to 12 inches of new light density snow at about 10400ft decreasing to about 6 inches at 8700ft