Newton Creek

While recent accumulations have improved conditions, access remains challenging at lower elevations in these drainages due to limited snow cover. In general, we found 1-2 ft of recent snow over the 2/7 crust above 5500 ft. While wind slabs generally appeared stubborn at the elevations we traveled, we were reminded we're not out of the woods yet when we observed a recent large natural avalanche in wind-drifted snow around 7500 ft in upper Newton and another large explosive-triggered avalanche in upper Heather Canyon that occurred on 2/19. 

Snowpack tests highlighted mixed results. Surprisingly, we found a stronger snowpack on an ENE aspect and a more complex snowpack on thinner W aspects that harbor more recent crusts with near-crust facets sandwiched between (10-12 inches below surface). The snowpack wasn't overly alarming today, but I wouldn't say it's a snowpack I would fully trust with more load & warming. 

Instability was mainly confined to wind-loaded features.

We went out to hunt down buried weak layers around Newton. We dug on several aspects between5300-6000 ft, ranging from ENE, W, and SW aspects. Here are our findings:

ENE @ 6000 ft: These middle elevation shady slopes have a healthier HS. In the spot we dug, we found an HS of 175 cm with 85 cm of recent snow over the 2/7 crust. Snowpack tests results were fairly unremarkable. While we did find some small near-crust facets on the 2/7, PSTs yielded 75/100 end. There are more well developed near-crust facets beneath this crust, but this crust is also roughly 5-8 cm thick in this location. CT's and shovel tilt test highlighted failures around 35 cm down on a mid-storm interface. The 2/16 crust does not exist on these more shady aspects.

WSW @ 5800 ft: This aspect had a thinner snowpack with more crusts. Due to this, we found some weak snow sandwiched between the upper crusts. These were .5 mm, faceted grains. While longer columns didn't propagate, smaller columns and tilt tests highlighted these weak grains roughly 25 cm below the surface. Test results: ECTN 11, 25 cm down/ CT12, SP, 25 cm down/ Tilt test failed on this interface.