Powder Pimple

We found a mixed bag of skiing conditions, from soft faceted surfaces to firm wind board. We stomped on a few start zones and had no results despite poor scores in stability tests. By about 12 PM, southerly surfaces were still cold and didn't seem to be warming at upper elevations. The stiffness of old wind slabs varied greatly, and poking around with a pole, we found inpenatrable knife hard slabs, and softer 1-finger hard slabs. The sweet spot for poor stability test scores seemed to be where the slab was thin and stiff—thicker slabs had more stubborn results, and soft slabs had no propagation. 

Surfaces were a mixture of soft, faceted snow near the tundra and stiff, unedgeable snow near the ridge. On steep snow near rocks, we even found some thin ice lenses from the last few weeks of sunny skies. 

We dug on the north and south sides of the ridge near 3500'. We have mixed results in our stability tests. On a previously wind-loaded slope with old wind slabs that were stiff and thick, we obtained ECTP11 results. Moving up hill slightly to where the wind slab was thinner, we had ECTPV (on isolation) results twice. On the south side of the ridge, we had ECTN15 results on the same layer. The layer of concern is a layer of facets sandwiched between older wind slabs and wind slabs formed by last week's winds, anywhere from 5-15cm deep, where we dug. HS ranged from 85-150cm at this elevation (thinner on the souths)