Weather
Winter was welcomed back today with temperatures below freezing, accompanied by snow all day. The winds were light for most of the day, until the end when they started to pick up from an easterly direction.
Snowpack
About a foot of low-density snow rested on top of crusts on all aspects. These crusts varied in thickness yet remained supportable to skis throughout the day. We chatted with some snowmobilers, and they were having a hard time getting their sleds on edge as well. The new snow appeared to come in right side up with a shovel tilt test, breaking about 2 inches above the crust with a single tap on the shovel. The snowpack below the crust is moist, except for some northerly-facing slopes near treeline, where the snow remains below the crust. On west-facing terrain near treeline, water moved through the entire snowpack, and you could make very nice snowballs with the basal layers. Here, the snow pack underneath the crust was fairly weak (4-Finger and Fist Hard), yet we didn’t find a slab on top of the weak snow.