Observation: Georges Bowl

Went up early to George's bowl to try to beat the weekend feeding frenzy. Plenty of good skiing especially with a little bit of creativity. There was wind damage for the upper 400 feet of vertical at times. The Wednesday storm has settled to about 6 to 10 inches here, with an overall depth of snow pack of 2 to 4 feet. I'm not one to make decisions based on a single snow pit but I use the wealth of observations here so it it's about time I make my contribution and add a data point.

I dug a pit North facing 9100'. The snow depth was 1 meter with 6 inches of compacted facets on the bottom. The facets looked better than what I expected. The October rain crust at this location was either broken down or non-existent. I could not get my pit to fail with an ECT. Above the facets the snowpack was nice and right side up.

Encouraging result but once again just one data point which is why I don't make decisions based on a single pit, and I skied low-angle stuff myself. The snow structure was still poor but definitely improving. I imagine slope stability testers will be out in force this weekend and I wish them well and hopefully nothing breaks and if nothing does break I would maybe join them next weekend on something steep and north facing at a location where there was a deep snowpack that wasn't too rocky with relatively lower consequences.