Skyland

Today Mark and I went up towards Baldhead Mountain in the Skyland area. 

• The 1 to 3 inches of snow that fell last night had already transitioned to wet. This snow sat on a surface crust on southerly aspects and wet snow on northerly aspects.
• Travel above 5500 feet is still relatively easy since the snowpack hasn't lost supportability yet. 
• We observed a small recent wet loose slide involving the few inches of recent snow. We saw 5 other larger (likley still D1-D1.5s) wet loose avalanches in a distant bowl. Those were all too far to have a clear assessment of timing and size. Those were on north facing aspects, so I assume within the last 48 hours. 
• We got no results in a snowpack tests on a N aspect at 6700 feet.
• Rollerballs were easy to initiate with ski turns and throwing snowballs. 
• On our descent, we both commented on how wet the snow got at around 6000 feet. Possibly a result of some greenhousing. 

Overall we found generally stable avalanche conditions below our high point of 6700 feet, although it would have been easy to trigger small wet loose avalanches if we entered steeper terrain. The Skyland road is on the edge of having long stretches of exposed dirt. We rode in on a snow covered road and road out on a few sections of dirt. Melting fast. 

The top 80 cm (30 inches) of snow transitions from wet to moist. We found dry snow roughly 80 cm down from the surface. The early february crust was buried 1 meter below the surface. Water has not yet made it to that weak layer at this location. The weak layer felt 1 step softer than surrounding snow. We got no results in extended column tests.