Weather
Clear, ~18F. Light breeze
Snowpack
Not optimal. Cold temperatures and small storms spread out over the last 2+ weeks appear to have not helped strengthen the snowpack in the below treeline band. I went into planar type terrain with sparse tree coverage hovering around 10,500 ft on a nearly due west aspect. Height of snow varied from 75-90cm and found erratic supportablity to skis from 20-45cms. Boot pen was achieved up to 80cm. Though there is nearly a meter of snow below 11k in this zone, it is unfortunately comprised of mostly well developed facets, depth hoar and two brittle crust layers. It would appear that a significant loading event in the neighborhood of 16 inches with 1.5" of water would be very concerning for step-down and large volume releases in this group.