Colorado

The tour began with an alder adventure, but luckily the snow was a supportable stout crust that made it easy to move over and under the jungle maze. At 1,700' the crust became breakable and we noticed surface hoar on top (1-2mm). By 2,100' there was 1.5' of soft dry snow. At 2,600' the snow was wind stiffened near the top of the Hemlock band. The riding conditions are good in the band between the wind stiffened snow and the crust down low. The snowpit didn't reveal any concerning results, but that is conflicting with results we have seen in other places in the alpine. This is one of the tricky things about persistent slabs, they can give varying results in different places.  

We dug a pit at 3,300' with a total height of snow of 1.7' (53cm). The area where we dug was the windward or south side of the ridge which had been stripped of snow during the last two big storms. Most of the snow in the pit was 1F, but when you grab a handful it falls apart into dry sugarlike grains. We did not get any concerning results (CT12 and ECTN11 - 5cm down on buried surface hoar, ECTN27 - 23cm down on a 4F layer of 1-2mm rounding facets). The facets were all rounding which is encouraging, but they were still dry and not sticking together. The buried surface hoar could become a problem later, but maybe not, it was capped with a winded layer of snow that was really firm. Across the gully from where we dug was a very large avalanche that had failed at the ground during the last storm just 4 days ago.