Pickett Peak

I went to Pickett Peak today since I wasn't sure about access to other areas given the storm and parking issues/road closures. From a quality perspective, this wasn't the best choice since rain/snow elevations were hovering right around 7000ft. But as soon as I began digging in the snow, it was clear that avalanche conditions were too touchy to go anywhere that quality would matter. In my first snowpit location, facets under the storm snow were collapsing even before isolating a test column. While trying to very carefully isolate an ECT, it collapsed and failed on the facets. I tried again and got to my second tap before it failed on the same facets. I went to two other locations and got similar, very touchy results. Visibility wasn't the greatest to determine if there was any buried surface hoar, but with weak facets reacting the way they were, I'm not sure how important the distinction is.

unstable snowpack tests