Meyers

We skied W and NW facing treed terrain from 6400 to 8500ft elevation 8am-2pm. Everything was cold powder in the morning but even the NW slopes were heating up and feeling sticky by early afternoon. Mostly cloudy skies broke up to scattered by 11am then it became more cloudy again into the early afternoon. Winds were light from the WSW. We felt some very local whumpfs while skinning above 8k'. In response, we kept our tour low angle and dug a pit to investigate the Feb 10 layer near that location. The Feb 10 facet layer was obvious in the profile and overlain by a very thin (<1cm) decomposing ice crust. It was 115cm from the surface where total height of snow was 195 cm. Beneath the thin crust were rounding, wet, 2mm facets. We had a CTH with sudden planar results on this layer. We did not see any results on this layer in our extended column test, so we performed a propagation saw test. We had PST26/115 End down 115cm. I searched for signs of snow settling, but did not see any settlement cones. But, the snow felt much more supportable on skis than earlier in the week. The cold powder had turned to terrible sticky mashed potatoes during our final W facing descent below 7500' around 2pm. Roller balls gained mass but we saw no other signs of wet snow instability.

Quick report