Spring Creek

Traveled to Spring Creek. Cold settled snow exists on most aspects at mid and upper elevations. You can really feel the Christmas rain crust under the snow until around 8800'.

By the end of the day steep solar slopes had taken on heat, there was already a crust forming when I left.

At low elevations, obstacles are thinly veiled under the recent storm.

 

There appears to be a couple of avalanches that happened towards the end of the last storm. One wind slab had a 6+ deep crown. It was either natural or remotely triggered by snowmobile tracks in the low angle meadow above the slide.

I dug on a north dacing slope around 9100'. The snow surface had a slight wind skin with faceting happening above and below it.

There are multiple crusts within the snowpack. I was able to identify faceted graupel on top of the 12/10 rain crust, but it was well bonded.

Snow at the bottom was developed facets, but is rounding. 

I did not get any results in an ECT which isn't suprising due to the very stout crusts.

There is evidence that liquid water penetrated the top 60 or so cm of the snowpack. 

The facets at the ground were moist, but overall the snowpack was drier than some places in the range.