Sunburst Northface

We toured from the Center Ridge parking lot up the north face of Sunburst to 1300 feet and dug snow pits. We observed a total snowback of 70 cm and about 10 cm of new snow that fell on a widespread melt freeze crust. Our snowpits showed alternating layers of melt-freeze crust and faceted snow all the way to the base. Stability tests produced some resistant planar (Q2) failures on a layer of facets between crusts 22 cm down, no propagation was observed in several ECTs. Stability seemed good at this location. CT 11 Q2 22 down ECTN 13 22 down Out most interesting observation was a layer of buried surface hoar under the fresh snow from yesterday. We found the layer reliably around the glade we dug in. We did not observe whoomfing or cracking. No snow transport was observed in the valleys or on ridgelines. We did not see any weather contributing to instability