Sonora Pass ,PCT

Today we went  to the upper elevations on 108. It's the easiest access to get on some ski-able snow at the moment. I was specifically looking for how the recent inversion and today's rain were affecting the faceted snow from November, which will be our base when we do eventually get more snow. The surface of the snow from where we parked at 9,800 to the top of our ski tour had a well saturated upper half of  the snowpack. Below that there was a series of crusts and facets layers until the ground. Snow depth ranged from 45 cm to 75 cm in  areas where wind-blown snow had collected were up to 90cm in depth. I dug two pits  at 10,400ft to get a better look at the structure. ECTX and ECTN12@30cm were my test results.

The Ski down was sticky, light rain throughout the day saturated what ski-able snow there was even further. We  were able to pick our way down and found a test slope that we used to ski cut and show the wet surface snow was losing cohesion (see video).

As we left the field Cal Trans closed the road to all traffic.