Twisp River

The Twisp River remains true to its character, with wild skiing filtered by the lowland shallows.  The alpine steeps could be harboring difficult to assess instabilities and almost certainly widespread wind-effects.

No signs of instabiity observed in the field today, other than dry loose sluffing of the very faceted surface snow. Expect, however, that lee starting zones received some loading today, with slabs perhaps now overlying weak surfaces and persistent grains.

The middle Twisp is, unsurprisingly, holding a shallow snowpack dominated by faceted grains.  Methow continental.  Travel below ~3000-3500' is a bit of a slow, bumpy grind.  Higher, the snowpack becomes more supportable to skis, with intermittent sections of old-buried wind press along ridges providing efficient travel and a reprieve from the facet churning.  Ski quality was cautiously very good, with interesting log moves near valley bottom.  I basically avoided alpine terrain and steep recent wind-loads near treeline today.  Expect that the alpine snow quality could be a tricky read, with a few iterations of shifting winds ongoing.

At a profile at 5000' on a NE aspect, I found a snowdepth of 100cm, almost entirely composed of faceted grains.  The January Drought Layer (buried 1/31) was down 15cm, but did not support an overlying slab in locations observed today.  Stability tests were unremarkable, but the current (weak) structure of the upper snowpack will not accomodate much of a new snow or wind load.  The now-buried January wind slabs were not present in terrain observed today, but they would be easily discernible with a ski pole, and would warrant some attention, bringing a different and potentially problematic structure to specific areas near and above treeline.