Pea Gravel Ridge

The snowpack is heavily wind-affected after this past week's strong winds. The sun and warmer temperatures are starting to create wet snow instabilities on steep, sun-exposed slopes at lower and middle elevations. There's very little snow available to transport at this point, and hard wind slabs are generally unreactive below 6500 ft. Overall, the snowpack is strong and right-side-up above the 1/3 crust. 

Instability was mainly confined to steep, sun exposed SE-SW aspects after 11 am. Instabilites in wind loaded, middle elevation terrain is settling out.

The snowpack is heavily wind-affected, and sun-exposed slopes are starting to feel the effects of warming. Cold, dry snow lingers on shaded N-NE-NW-E aspects. HS ranges from 90 cm-130 cm in the lower canyon to 180 cm near ridgecrest on E aspects around 6k. 

Stiff, surface wind slabs are generally settling out and unreactive across middle elevations. Below the surface, the snowpack is quite strong. I targeted the 1/3 crust with snowpack tests. I found this prominent crust (4-5 cm thick) roughly 2.5 ft below the surface on E aspects. PSTs and ECT produced unremarkeble results on this crust, while CT's highlighed SP results (CTM SP, 20 cm down) on a softer layer of precip particles resting under the stiff, 1F surface wind slab. This interface didn't propagate with ECTs. In general, I found a favorable hardness profile above the crust and little concern in the upper snowpack for right now. 

West aspects are heavily wind-affected, scoured, and have a much thinner snowpack above 5500 ft. 

While the 2-3 ft of recent snow certainly helped improve travel, there are still plenty of open creeks that are challenging to cross in the canyon bottoms.