Nicks

Conditions in Nicks were found to be better for travel and riding than other recent locations travelled that held heavily wind damaged snow.  There was 2-4 inches of new snow with a snowpack that was spatially variable beneath.  In some areas new snow was above a thin and soft wind slab that was reactive in hand shears, failing on isolation.  These thin wind slabs were sitting on facets that were not bonded well to older/ harder wind affected snow.  On NE windward terrain we found some slopes were the snowpack was less than a meter deep and was almost entirely comprised of large developed depth hoar.  In more protected terrain better structure was found with old persistent weak layers showing signs of decreasing sensitivity.

The main take away was that the new snow has made it more difficult for users to identify wind slabs and thin areas of the snowpack.  Pockets of unstable wind slabs still exist.  Also, there remains a high degree of spatial variabilty making continued assessment important especially if travelling on a snowmachine and going through lots of differnt terrain.