Hanging Lake Area

<p>Faffed around in the Hanging Lake area today. HUGELY variable conditions. Dug a pit at 1525m on a WNW aspect and found reactive layers in the storm snow. A hard 15cm wind slab on the surface, with about 25cm of soft unconsolidated snow beneath, both of which sheared simultaneously during a column test. As we isolated our column, we also had blocks of up to 60cm depth coming off in large, cleanly sheared chunks. Interestingly, in this particular location, we found no evidence of the melt-freeze crust. It's not clear if it was buried so deep from wind drifting (over a meter) that we didn't find it or if it was very thin to begin with on this more or less non-solar aspect and has recrystallized with the cold temps. Overall I'd say the snowpack was a lot more...interesting? than expected, and that higher terrain on the northern half of the spectrum should be treated with some caution for the foreseeable future. We found wind drifting across almost all aspects, particularly west through north. In most places we found drifting, there was a relatively hard surface slab (~15cm) on top of a significant accumulation of unconsolidated, light snow. We skied a south facing line around mid-day and were surprised to find that today's bluebird sunshine had baked it. We found a thin zipper crust and heavy, wet snow from about 1250-1500m on south facing slopes. Things are funky out there, but in about 2 days I think non-solar alpine terrain will be skiing pretty phenomenally. </p>