Noisy Basin/ Aeneas Ridge

Getting a look at the Aeneas Ridge weather station was today's primary objective - no wind data since the big wind event this week. We figured the winds had snapped a crossarm. Instead, we found it encased in heavily-rimed water ice, perhaps from refrozen rain during the AR. After some shenanigans accessing the sensors, we managed to get the ice and rime off and the station is reporting again. 

• 7-10 cm of snow overnight (loose and dry at mid elevations. Moist/ wet at lower elevations.
• Little evidence of recent wind-transport - just a couple patches of 2-10 cm thick wind packed snow that cracked around my skis.
• Lots of old, hard drifts near ridges and on the windward side of Aeneas ridge.
• A snow profile on a slope near the mid-upper elevation transition showed 40-50 cm of recent snow on an ice/ crust sandwich. This sits on a thin layer of small garupel and did not propagate in an ECT. Note - this crust is more like 25-30 cm below the surface near the elevation of Camp Misery. 
• The mid-February SH was visible, but it appears to be getting crushed by the slab above.
• The JDL was obvious - about 155 cm below the surface and still large, mostly intact buried surface hoar. We didn't test it directly. It still dominates my route finding considerations.

 

A few chunks of thin but hard fresh wind slab on northerly side of ridge that cracked around skis.

Test profile 6625 ft NW. HS > 3m.

• 45 cm of F to 4F precipitation particles/ decomposing fragments from recent storms. Loose at the top 3/13-4 snow), then consolidated.
• 5 cm ice/ crust sandwich. 1+ cm melt freeze crust, (1 F), soft SF, ~1 cm ice lens (P)\
• 1cm graupel/ rimed pp - ECTN 24
• ~100 cm 1F to P hard rounds - 2/14 buried surface hoar still visible but not much softer than slab
• 2 cm JDL surface hoar (4+ mm, intact though rounding)

No direct tests on JDL.