Fireplug

The Fireplug held a tale of two aspects: the sunny SE-S aspects and the shady, cool N-NE aspects. Most of the snow had melted away on the SE-S aspects. What was left had a melt-freeze crust on the surface and plenty of bushes and rocks pocking through it. Luckily, our skins worked fine on sand and bushes, and the melt-freeze crusts usually supported our weight. 

Once we crested the ridge and moved to the N-NE facing slopes, we found 12-18 inches of consistent snow cover. However, that snow has weakened to the point that we would sink 6-10 inches into the snow with every step. We sank through the barely supportable top layers into loose, sugary snow to the ground if we stepped off our skis. We could also feel the weak snow in the bottom half of the snowpack with every pole plant (see the snowpack section for more details). Despite having more snow on the northerly aspects, we hit more rocks and barely covered obstacles on this side since the snowpack remains so weak. Based on what we saw today, it seems like a new load of dense, heavy snow could easily cause the weak layers in this snowpack to fail.

The snowpack on the north side of Fireplug remains thin and less supportable than in other nearby areas. It has a similar basic structure with a thin layer of soft snow on top of a slightly more dense snow layer in the snowpack's upper half. The lower half of the snowpack consists entirely of weak, sugary snow (facets). Tests and snowpit data confirmed that the snowpack remains very weak and will likely not handle a new loading event well.