Wintery Washy

With all the snow that has been falling lately, we decided to keep our plan simple and head to the Mount Washington area to see how it was all settling out. We found 50 cm of storm snow from the past 3 days. The top 20 cm was light and dry, which became progressively more dense. Around 30 cm deep, there was a thin melt-freeze crust that likely came from Sunday's brief warming. While we did get moderate sudden planar results in both our compression test and our extended column test near the bottom of the storm snow, we did not see this translating to a storm slab that was reactive to skier or sledder traffic. There was evidence of loose dry avalanches out of steep terrain from during the storm, and more occurring as the sun hit the slopes. By noon, the sun and warming temperatures were rapidly settling the snowpack, making for much heavier snow and firmer travel.