Baldy

On Baldy, some slopes were heavily eroded by the recent wind events, while others still appear to have the full season's snowpack or took on some crossloading.  We felt comfortable skiing steep terrain where slabs were well-eroded, and remained cautious of larger terrain features with the persistent slab structure still intact, given the large avalanche potential and uncertainty.  We found propagating test results on a preserved slope NTL and failed to find any signs of instability under foot except a small skier triggered wind slab.  

Targeted a few features holding wind slabs with no signs of instability until I triggered one with a very aggressive ski turn.

I found propagating results on the Christmas facet layer on an ENE aspect NTL.  The weekend wind slabs showed a mix of propagating results and non-propagating results on SE aspects, depending on if they formed over dry facets (on the shadier half of SE) or crusts (on the sunnier half of SE).  

Snow surfaces going into our next storm are highly variable.  Below treeline, melt-freeze crusts span southerlies, thinning and transitioning to weak facets around due east.  Near treeline is similar in sheltered terrain: crusts on southerlies, facets on northerlies.  Hard windboard and faceted sastrugi are common in wind-exposed terrain.  Alpine slopes look heavily wind-affected in most areas, a mix of erosional features and windboard.