Buttress between Nicks and Gully 2

Travelled partway up the buttress between Nicks and Gully 2 to look at the snow structure in an area that is more exposed to wind than the gullies.  The 12/1 rain crust is still preventing further scouring of the snowpack where it exists.  This rain crust has created a significant divergence in the snowpack, depending on its presence.  

Where the rain crust exists below 3000', there is a drier, more porous snowpack and less spatial variability.  The more porous attribute of the snowpack is allowing more effective vapor transport through the snowpack.  The result of this is faceting and a weak upper snowpack.

Where there is no rain crust the wind has had a much greater effect on the snowpack with a high degree of spatial variability, and a very dense, less porous snowpack.  The result is hard and strong windslabs mixed with bare ground and very thin snowpacks on windward slopes.  Dense windslabs have slowed down faceting in the upper snowpack compared to below 3000'.

Once snowfall returns this will be an important distinction to keep in mind.   Slopes below 3000' will become overloaded quicker than those at upper elevation.  Most slopes below 3000' have thick alders to act as anchors, but there are some slopes such as the buttresses between the gullies with less vegetation where this setup could be an issue.

This is not suggesting that new snow will bond well to old wind slabs, we won't know the answer to that until it happens and they may act as an effective bed surface if bonding turns out to be poor.  What I am suggesting is that the hard wind slabs will be able to support a greater load without deeper failures.

Snowpit at 2800'/N aspect showed low strength, fair structure, and low stress.  No results were observed on ECT tests.  Faceting was observed throughout the entire snowpack, but the stage of faceting could not yet be considered developed for this location. See profile for more details.

Wind slabs are locked up and not reactive