N Side Granite

We found enough snow to ski today, but the snowpack remains very thin overall. We did not observe any signs of instability, despite encountering weak snow near the ground in hand pits along the approach. We dug down to assess the snowpack and found poor results in our stability tests. While the snow pack here was nearly 6' deep, weak snow still existed in the bottom third of the snowpack; this is where we saw propagating results in stability tests. 

Surfaces: We found thin melt freeze crusts on some solar slopes, but not all. Surfaces were primarily decomposing fragments and were just beginning to facet. 

Buried Weak Layers: Almost every slope we traveled on had weak old snow near the ground to some degree, and many of these slopes lacked any continuity or much of a slab above these weak layers. On the W side of the ridge, we dug on an NW-facing slope. In snow stability tests, we had ECP23 and PST 80/100 END results @~85cm ( HS: 179). Test failed on facets near the bottom of the stiff slab above.