Crystal Mountain Backcountry

My goal was to travel around up high and on multiple aspects to dig and look at the snowpack from the Solstice Crust upwards. There are definitely weak points, but it's hard to know which could reach a tipping point during this weekend's storm. Maybe none or maybe all?

I also observed a few gusty periods and some minimal blowing snow. We triggered a few shallow pockets of wind slab during our travels, mostly near ridgeline, on N, E, and W aspects. There is plenty of evidence of wind-transport such as textured surfaces, drifted in skin tracks, shallow slabs, and fresh small cornices.

Small bits of cracking in wind-drifted terrain at upper elevations. I triggered a few wind-pockets - it's hard to call them consequential avalanches.

The upper snowpack around Crystal Mountain still contains weak points from the Solstice Crust upwards. I dug three formal pits and numerous hand pits during my travels, trying to gauge how the snowpack would fare tonight and tomorrow.

Today's most reactive layer was the 1/2 buried surface hoar, which I was consistently finding about 12cm down. I found it on multiple aspects at mid and upper elevations. The slab atop was quite soft but failed and propagated in extended column tests (ECTP3 x3).

The interesting part was searching for the 12/30 crust, It was either well-defined as a thin breakable crust or essentially non-existent. That will make identification of the 1/2 layer a bit trickier.  But it also could mean less of a sliding surface for avalanches.

Crystal also appeared to have escaped the warmup yesterday - so no 1/4 crust where I traveled today.

The 12/25 and Solstice Crusts also had the ability to fail but seemed to be in a better place than when I last saw them on Monday in Morse Creek.