Toe of Deserted glacier bench at 3400ft

Above treeline, we observed a wind-sculpted snowpack with a variety of surface conditions, including wind-packed powder, sastrugi, and windslabs of varying hardness/thickness. Light snow accumulation last week helped to improve travel conditions quite a bit, especially as we moved further to the east.  No recent avalanche activity was observed in our area, and signs of instability were very limited, with a couple of slopes producing isolated cracks to 10 cm deep. 

Cracking was very isolated to a couple of small slopes with recently deposited windslabs. Other harder windslabs were unreactive.

We dug a pit at 3400 feet above the west side of the Deserted glacier in an area where the snowpack was 254cm deep. The upper 2 feet of the snowpack showed poor structure, fair strength, and low stress. 15cm of freshly deposited wind-stiffened powder was found on top of older 10cm thick knife-hard wind windslabs with 10cm of facets underneath. Below this, the 1/26 layer was observable as a thin grey line about 45cm deep. Buried facets and the 1/26 layer were both stubborn to react in the pit tests, but may become active with future loading.  

Deeper in the snowpack, we could feel 70cm of hard December windslab overlying weaker snow near the ground.

See pit for more info.