Herman Saddle

Spring pow day with cold snow hanging on in northerly aspects, while any slopes that saw sun during breaks in cloud cover rapidly warmed and thickened. To keep it simple, the new snow rode well and was generally stable in garden-variety, planar avalanche terrain less than about 40 degrees. The April sun did its typical thing with new snow - rollerballs and small wet loose during warming periods, but not enough sun to get a real cycle started by midday. Clouds and light snowfall in the afternoon. It felt like a solid, Moderate danger day at low and mid-elevations between warming and pockets of slab instability in isolated terrain features. Might have been the same up high, but with the amount of new snow would have traveled like it was Considerable at upper elevations.

45-60cm of new snow over melt forms buried on 4/13. New snow generally right-side-up (F > P), with a sudden hardness increase at the mid-storm layer down 30cm. Some stiffer surface layers were found on east-facing, wind-loaded features. Sun-exposed slopes warmed and will have thin crust after cooling. New snow found to have a good bond to the 4/13 interface. Above 4500', this was a P to K hard 3cm crust (boot-supportable), and below this elevation was 1F, unsupportable melt-forms. Stability testing yielded various RP or B mid-storm interfaces and hard resistant results above and below the crust. ECT produced no results.