Southern Ruby Range

Apart from developing small wet loose instabilies, the snowpack quieted down compared to yesterday. However, we could still produce cracking and triggered wind slabs on wind-loaded features near treeline. We avoided larger and more consequential leeward slopes above treeline, where a handful of large natural avalanches ran during yesterday's storm (which over-delivered more than 2' of snow to the Ruby Range). 

Most of our travels were in terrain with minor wind affect, but in a few features where winds had stiffened the snow, we produced some cracking up to 5' or 6' long. This was at about 12,000'. Rollerballs and small wet loose avalanches ran naturally as the day warmed up on sunnier aspects.

I tested numerous small, steep slopes (sheltered or lightly drifted) facing NE, E, and SE near treeline to see if storm slabs were still reactive and if the 3/3 interface was giving persistent weak layer signals in this snow bullseye zone.  The snowpack was quiet.  On northerlies, the 3/3 interface is a small grained (.3 to .5) layer with minor faceting.  The current snow surface looks weaker: 1 mm fragmenting stellar dendrites on northerlies and .5 mm radiation recrystallization on southerlies.  The storm snow became moist and gloppy on southerly aspects at upper elevations, wet at lower elevations by this afternoon.