St. Mary

We were able to drive to the St. Mary's trailhead and skin right from the car. However, the snowpack was thin. On south and southeast aspects below 8200 feet,  a foot or less of low density snow from the past week sits directly on the ground. At higher elevations a buried crust from early November made travel easier.

At treeline, winds were moderate with strong gusts from the southwest, blowing snow into downwind areas. We dug a pit on a NE aspect at 8550 feet and found a few inches of new wind slab, which produced a non-propagating result in an extended column test (ECTN) after five light taps. Below the wind slab was old snow from last week, sitting on about a foot of faceting melt-forms.

The new snow was cracking under our skis in isolated locations where it was deeper than about a foot. As the storm continues, expect new snow to be reactive anywhere you see drift a foot deep or more.

Cracking occured at our ski tips in new, wind loaded snow. Cracks were less than 60 cm (2 feet) long, and isolated to areas where drifts were over 20 cm (8 inches) deep.

We dug on a NE aspect at 8550 feet with a snowpack depth of 50cm. There was 6 cm of new wind slab over 20 cm of relatively soft (four-finger hardness) mixed grain forms from last week. This overlay 25 cm of hard (pencil hardness) faceting melt-freeze crust to the ground. The interface between last week's snow and the melt-freeze crust contained small facets.

We had an ECTN5 down 6 cm, between the wind slab and old snow. We had ECTX on the facets above the melt-freeze crust.