Uleda Ridge

Rain and warm temperatures have introduced liquid water into the upper snowpack. The Schweitzer Snotel recorded about 1.0 inch of water as rain in the last 24 hours. About 8 inches (20cm) of snow sits on a hard rain crust from a week ago (3/12); this crust formed from a rapid warm up overnight with a rain mid-storm combined with a blizzard and very strong wind storm. During this current warm and intermittent to moderate rainy period, avalanche hazards pertain to wet loose snow and wet slab sensitivity on various crust interfaces. While the persistent weak layers of buried surface hoar deeper down have been unreactive; the inherent uncertainty around these layers is further complicated with the introduction of water to the upper snowpack.

Very wet snow in the upper 8 inches of the snowpack sitting above a stout raincrust. Water was pooling above the crust and the snow was slushy at this interface. Despite being heavily wetted, the 2cm thick crust remained supportable on skis and mostly supportable to normal walking pressure in boots. We did not travel on any slopes steeper than 25 degrees today, however I assume that it would have been very easy to initate pinwheels or large wet loose avalanches on slopes steeper than 40 degrees.

We traveled on skis near 6000 feet on a mellow ridge. We observed shallow (~5cm) ski surface penetration and about 20 to 30 cm boot penetration of wet snow surfaces. Warm temperatures have caused trees to shed their snow and ice coatings, creating varied surface conditions near trees. Overall snow surface conditions is heavy wet snow. 

In a pit dug near 6000 feet on a Northwest aspect, snowpack height was 250 cm. We observed the top 2 cm of wet to very wet surface snow show easy force propagation in one ECT. Signs of water percolation and pooling was observed on the 3/12 rain crust (2 cm thick, Ice to Knife hard) down 18cm from surface at this location. The wet snow on the interface of the uppermost (3/12) crust the snow appears still well adhered to this crust. Signs of some limited water percolation through the 3/12 K/I hard crust was observed with moist snow underneath. Moist snow  extends down about 60cm below the surface where it transitions to drier snow within 1F to P hard snow.

The two buried surface hoar layers (V-day-2/14 [size 4 - 8 mm] and 1/28 [size 6 - 8 mm]) were intact in this location and found down 85 cm and 100 cm below the surface respectively at this pit location. No ECT results were observed on these layers. We observed propagation to end of column with a saw cut length less than half column length: PST (48/120) END on the January 28 surface hoar down 100 cm from the surface. We did not observe any other reliable or notable test scores at this location.