Old wind hardened snow surfaces

Before the arrival of the incoming storm we travelled by sled to check on snowpack structure above Fraser this morning, past Bryant Lake up to the Notch. Snow surfaces are firm, with sastrugi and wind pressed snow throughout the drainage. We dug in two different aspects and found snow depth varied between 160 cm and 220 cm at roughly 1400 m elevation with generally firm snow (1 finger stiffness) in the top 20cm, then increasingly hard snow below that with two buried weak layers (facetted snow around old crusts) down around 60 cm and 80 cm deep. The mid pack is generally pencil hard, dense and blocky. The bottom 1/3 of the snowpack is loose and sugary and weak. Temps were -10 C in the alpine and clouds were starting to roll in with light snow just beginning around noon. This is a significant storm arriving tonight so expect avalanche danger will rise with a big load on this snowpack.