Ophir Peak

We headed to Ophir Peak to look for areas of buried surface hoar and found them. Snow surface texture showed the impressive winds from yesterday with a mix of wind loaded and wind scoured areas near treeline and below treeline. Across NW-N-NE aspects we found surface hoar up to 15 mm grain size that had persisted to burial by yesterday's 1.5 cm of new snow and wind. In some lightly wind scoured spots the surface hoar was exposed at the snow surface in a partially knocked over state. Even this partially knocked over surface hoar looked problematic and unlikely to support significant amounts of new snow loading. In most areas the surface hoar was buried under 4 to 10 cm thick wind slab. In the most heavily wind loaded areas we encountered, we saw surface hoar under wind slab to 20 cm thickness. There is clearly now a buried weak layer in near treeline and below treeline areas across northerly aspects that will not handle significant amounts of new snow loading.

Surface hoar mostly buried 4 to 10 cm below the surface. SH buried up to 20 cm in more heavily wind loaded areas.