Bishop Skyline - Basin

Minimal new instabilities were observed today. No avalanche activity was observed. 

After navigating the patchy snow coverage up to 8500', I traveled on as many aspects as I could in near and above treeline terrain in this area. 

• Below 10000': many surfaces were melt-freeze crusts.  Crusts were up to 15 cm thick and 4 F - K hard. They thawed quickly on solar aspects. The snow beneath the surfaces was wet to the ground where the snowpack was shallower (up to ~ 65 cm) on solar aspects by 11 am. 
• Above 11000': T air: 36 @ 1:40 pm on a ESE aspect. Surfaces were not consistently thawed. E faces held a slick, P - K hard crust with up to 1mm near surface facets above the crust and 4F - 1F 1 mm facets below the crust. Snow was dry. S slopes held wet surface snow (melt forms). Boot pen was ~ 10 cm into wet snow. Ski pen was ~ 5 cm. N aspects held a combination of crusts and wind deposited facets and also areas of old wind deposits that have faceted. 

Of particular note to our snowpack structure: I found deeply buried fist hard snow on E - N aspects near 11000'; the majority of the snowpack is 1F - P hard. Height of snow was over 2 meters. I probed and found multiple crust facet combos on E aspects in particular. All areas probed E - N held up to 50 cm of F hard snow at the base of the snowpack.