Titus Ridge - Weather Station Peak

We found no obvious signs of instability but did find propagating results in multiple stability tests and a few old avalanches (natural and human-triggered) that are evidence of the persistent slab problem.

While touring, we observed fairly consistent weak basal snow on the northern half of the compass above 8700 ft. The weak snow near the base was easy to track with frequent pole probing, given that total snow depths are 2-3 ft in the areas we travelled. We also found widespread surface hoar on all aspects from 8700-10000 ft... something to keep an eye on during our next week of high-pressure.

While touring we observed fairly consistent weak basal snow on slopes on the northern half of the compass above 8700 ft. The basal weak snow was generally less thick on W aspects but still widespread. The weak snow near the base was easy to track with frequent pole probing, given that total snow depths are 50-100cm in the areas we travelled. We also found widespread surface hoar on all aspects from 8700-10000 ft... something to keep an eye on during our next week of high-pressure.

We dug two pits (attached profiles) on two different aspects to gather a better understanding of the distributions of the weak snow at the bottom of the snowpack and general structure at upper elevations:

• At 9870 ft on a W aspect, we received a pair of ECTP14@9cm results in the first pit - clearly exhibiting the persistent slab problem.
• At 9800 ft on an E aspect, our stability tests did not propagate nor fail in the basal weak snow despite its presence. We took these mixed results between our two pits with a grain of salt, as persistent slab problems are rarely straight forward to assess.