Hankin - AST 2 Obs

A few observations from an AST 2 course, as we toured throughout the Hankin zone today. We found 12cm of new snow, tapering rapidly with elevation, overlying a meltfreeze and suncrust. The Suncrust on the solar aspects is into the Alpine, on the Polar aspects we founds the meltfreeze crust up to 1400m. We did a few snowpack tests - on a NE aspect in an open area, 1350m, we had a moderate compression test result down 20cm on small facets and some surface hoar over a crust. Suspect this layer formed around March 5 ? We also had a hard result down 40cm on the Feb facets. Both tests gave Pops and drops, for fracture character. Yet in an extended column test beside it, we had no propagating fractures. We also dug on a south aspect, near treeline at 1600m. Here in a very sheltered area, we had a snow depth of 160cm, and we found the bottom half completely facetted to ground. The Feb facet layer was down 60cm here, with no test results, and we found the December 7 raincrust/facet layer down 110cm, and it have a hard compression test result, but a collapse/ drop fracture character. Extended Column tests gave no results. We had no whumpfing or cracking, we saw no recent avalanches, and a few small test slopes we jumped on had no results. The only activity we saw was some loose dry avalanches to <size 1 in very steep terrain, and some sluffing moving with our skiing, in the top 10cm . Weather was cloudy, with convective flurries, and -8c, and calm winds.