Observation: Northern Bear River Range

We made it out into the Northern Bear River Range today and found some great riding during a full winter blizzard. It snowed 4-5 inched in a couple of hours. We found 26-30 inches on the ground in north east facing terrain around 9000 feet. We dug avalanche pits at 9000 feet on a 34 degree north facing slope. There was faceted snow in the bottom half of the pit but it was not all that reactive to pit tests. Compression tests did not reveal any major issues and we did not get any clean failures. The Extended Column Test did not produce any failures either. I will not trust the snowpack with a big load on it over the next few days, but today was excellent for riding some steep deep powder.