East Peak - Cement Basin

A bit of a rugged day between slick skin tracks, strong winds, blowing snow, and highly variable surface conditions - with decent turns found only here and there. While wind-loaded slopes seemed like they were unreactive, facets above the EFC made for higher uncertainty. They were reason enough to still avoid steep, freshly wind-loaded terrain. There is minimal avalanche danger outside of wind loaded areas.

Continued strong easterly winds have created a highly variable snowpack at upper elevations. While it's not an issue now, it could make it difficult to pinpoint instability when the current snow surface has a meaningful slab above.

Localized cracking around skis in wind-loaded features and small cornices failed when tested. On solar aspects, the shallow sun crust would crack and slide easily on softer snow below. Rollerballs from warming on Sunday the 18th found on all aspects.

Breakable crust on most solar aspects. More northerly slopes didn't have much sun or temperature crust, but the snow surface was still thickened up from warming on Sunday, even at upper elevations. Pockety wind slab formation on north through west aspects, but minimal reactivity on wind-loaded test slopes. The steep northeast through southeast start zones around East Peak were scoured down to the Early February Crust, and quite slick.

Snow depth over the EFC ranged from 0 to 60cm with most areas having 20-30cm. Distinct layering from the three or so loading events since early February could be found in most pits. Small-grained facets were found around buried sun crusts on solar aspects. Larger facets directly above the EFC, especially on northerly aspects. The 2/14 interface was easy to see in some pits and looked like buried surface hoar, but only found a few preserved SH grains.  The facets above the EFC seem likely they will be the layer of concern moving forward - but there just isn't a big enough slab above them in most places .