Weather
There was on and off light snow throughout the morning with broken sky clearing in the afternoon to scattered sky and lots of sunshine. Moderate to strong southwest winds moving some snow at ridgeline, but not much snow left to transport on windward slopes on Treasure.
Snowpack
Snow surfaces basically consisted of supportable melt-freeze crusts on the south half of the compass, becoming thinner and more breakable above 13,000 feet, and a variety of wind-packed rounds and moist rounded grains with plenty of melt forms at lower elevations on slopes facing the north half of the compass. No signs of near-surface faceting or surface hour on any of the slopes I traveled on today. Several test pits on west-facing slopes above treeline show about a 2 to 3 foot thick, P to K hard (on the hand hardness scale) slab on top of 4F- to F hard depth hoar for another 2 to 3 feet down to the ground. This highlights the lingering, hard Persistent Slab issue on high-elevation west-facing slopes, where you are most likely to trigger the weak layer along the margins of the slab. North-facing slopes in Bear Basin above 11,000 feet varied between 230 and 300cm deep. There was little evidence of the March 3 Persistent Weak layer in test pits above treeline and it showed non-propagating failures in extended column tests near treeline. The Valentine's weak layer is still fairly prominent near and above treeline but buried over 150cm deep everywhere I dug. The height of snow decreased pretty quickly below 10,000 feet to only about a meter or less deep on wind-sheltered, north-facing slopes around 9500 feet. The March 3 persistent weak layer below treeline is starting to blend with the above and below slabs but still shows a mix of propagating and non-propagating results in extended column tests.
Avalanche
Observed several large avalanches that haven't been coded yet from last week/weekend's avalanche cycle around March 6 to 8 with 1 or 2 avalanches appearing more recent