Morrison Col

As we are well aware, and as I found yet again today, there is a dog's breakfast of surface conditions in the mountains currently. I found a lot of them. Facets, boards, crusts. Some supportable, some not. 

I looked for a northerly aspect near treeline, with a shallower snow depth and a cohesive slab above the 1/1 crust. While I found an isolated pocket with a 65cm 1F slab overlaying the 1/1 crust, there were no facets above or below the crust, and the upper snowpack was mostly small rounds. This location lacked the weak layer variable in the slab+weak layer+bed surface equation.

No signs of instability today.

Variety is the spice of life... or something like that. Surfaces today were similar to recent observations: faceted and shallow, firm and wind-pressed, melt-freeze or moist. The snow height was also quite variable. Solars and low elevations are melting out, while northerlies hold cold, dry snow. Today I found:

• Softening snow on solar aspects around 12. The surface never became concerningly wet where I travelled today.
• I noted a moist surface on a steep, west-facing slope at 9,000' around 2 pm. Low-angle, low-elevation slopes around the compass had moist-wet snow at the surface. 
• On a due south aspect around 10,500, sublimation is taking place, and there are super tiny penitentes at the surface. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penitente_(snow_formation)
• I dug a hole on a north-facing slope at 10300'. I found 65cm of snow overlaying the 1/1 crust, with a total depth of 155cm. The upper 65cm was windpressed and 1F. While there were sharp edges on small (<.5mm) rounded grains, they were not well faceted. I did not initiate failure or find propagation in the top ~80cm. This location had a bed surface and a cohesive slab, but no weak layer. ECTX