Observation: Session Mountains

Cold day in the backcountry. Headed up from Bountiful into the Session mountains to look at the recently wind-drifted snow and any interfaces that may currently exist. The overall snow surface was soft, with little signs of scouring even along ridgelines thatpreviouslyevious scoured. Tested a few steeper slopes that looked as though they had received some wind drifting, and could only get sluffing. We looked at the upper 3-4' on a North Aspect at 8500'. The height of the snow was 255 cm. There was a layer of 2-3mm graupel 15 cm down but did not get any results on that layer. 25cm down we found a pencil hard melt-freeze crust. Got ECTN23 below the crust. No obvious near-surface facets above or below the crust. The crust seemed to match the riding conditions. We did not see any other signs of recent avalanche activity where we traveled.

Primarily a soft cold powder on a supportable base. A few areas had a bit stiffer wind-drifted snow along ridgetops. Heavy riming on trees, and rock features on ridgelines.