Quick report
Traveled into avalanche terrain with members of Lakes Region Search and Rescue's advanced winter team. We traveled into a convex area of a snowfield, climber's right of Lobster Claw, to dig a pit. We dug on a 32° SE-facing slope at about 4600'. Our area was in the sun, and air temp was 7 °C. The surface in this location was soft, and boot penetration was over 10cm, very out of character for the rest of the ravine. Overall, this snow was incredibly stable. There was 17cm of 4F (soft) snow on top that had been melted from the refreeze, then a 3cm ice crust. The rest of the column was firm, 1F pencil-hard snow broken up by the crusts from previous warming/rain events. Some of these crusts had started to decompose, and everything was very well bonded and pretty saturated. Stability tests yielded no results, and the column of snow remained intact even when thrown.