Point 6

Overall I found thin conditions with minimal avalanche hazard where I traveled today. There is a lot of weak, faceted snow out there, but a slab (a key ingredient of a slab avalanche) is missing in most places. Other zones that received more snow from last weekend's storm likely have a thicker slab at the surface and increased hazard. 

I found some very small wind slabs right along ridgelines and wind lips in obviously wind loaded areas. They were reactive but mostly harmless unless caught in the wrong situation. However, there was ongoing light wind transport today, and snow is forecast for this weekend, so we can expect the wind slabs to grow. 

I still have some uncertainty about whether there are areas with substantially weaker snow near the ground. Probing around, the snowpack generally felt similar to the pits I dug, but some isolated areas felt more hollow/inverted. 

Upper elevations are still thin, but the snowpack has some body to it. Middle and lower elevations are still very thin. 

I dug two snowpits today, one on a NW aspect and the other on a S aspect, both at 7800 ft. The NW aspect was 96 cm deep, and the S aspect was 68 cm deep.  Both pits had 3-4" of new/recent snow from the last week. Around 1 inch of this snow was new in the last 24 hours. Below that, the NW aspect was weak and faceted to the ground (see snowpit profile). The facets were weakest near the surface and mostly stronger near the ground. The S aspect was also similarly faceted, but had a 2 cm thick sun crust between the facets and the new/recent snow. The NW aspect produced no results in extended column or compression tests. I did not conduct stability tests on the S aspect.