Quick report
Great skiing off sunny slopes and a right side up snowpack. Snow is continuing to settle extensively, and is much more supportable than previous days. I didn't find any instabilities that alarmed me.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Sky cover was highly variable, with ominous clouds south of Shuksan and hiding Baker from the vantage at Artist Point. Additional patches of cloud due to orographic lift near most mountains was present. Cloud line was around 5500-6000ft but highly variable. It was cold in the shade! Light southerly wind at Artist Point, but not transporting any snow. New snow layer didn't show any wind-effect, but obvious previous signs of wind-effect like stubborn old cornices and wind features were present.
Snowpack
Low density, right side up snow was present everywhere I travelled. Skiing was great! I stayed off south-facing aspects - even small south-facing features had a crust or was moist in the top couple inches.
On all other surfaces, the top couple inches of snow were extremely low density, and surface hoar was mixed in with the surface layer, 2mm.
I dug a north-facing pit at Artist Point (5100') and found a barely present storm instability about 1ft below the surface. I was able to find it with a tilt test, which took many taps before I saw a failure. The same layer also produced a CT28, rough break. I dug a meter deep and probed to the ground. The 2/24 crust was 225cm deep and the ground was 350cm deep. The snow was progressively harder the further down in the pit I tested (right side up).
Remarkably different from the past few days, ski penetration everywhere I traveled was close to 6" (15cm). Boot pen was about a foot.
Avalanche
All avalanche activity I saw where I traveled was old wet loose from previous days and small wind slabs and sluffs (dry loose). D.5-1. Some were human triggered. Tracks were everywhere in the basin.