Smithbrook

It was a beautiful, cold and clear day. Sun may have created a very very thin crust on the steepest south facing slopes, but the snowpack is holding lots of cold content and is dry. We could see many areas of wind affected surfaces and found one recent natural wind slab from a high West facing slope. Still, many sheltered areas hold deep powder and are not wind affected at all. 

The most notable observation from today was an older very large avalanche on the NE side of Jove Peak (estimated occurence of Jan 11th). This appears to have been a number of smaller soft slabs that stepped down to a deeper weak layer.

Snowpack had minimal wind affect where we traveled today, though at a ridgetop the cornices were overhanging and still somewhat sensitive on a NE aspect. We could see many slopes at upper elevation that had wind texture, and likely slabs.

The snowpack is cold right now. Snow surfaces stayed dry even in the sun, save for slight warming on steep southerly aspects later in the day. 

We dug a profile on a SSW aspect at 4,800ft on an open, 35 degree slope. HS was 185cm. Progressive hardness from F- down to P, and Jan 2 facet/melt form layer was down 115cm at 1F+ hardness and 0.5-1mm in size. This layer was ~4cm thick and sat on a very smooth sun crust from 12/30. We got a CTH, SC (26) on this layer down 115cm. An experimental deep ECT did not propagate the whole column.