Nadahini

A lot of spatial variability in snow depth with weak faceted snow all over the place. Top 30cm of new snow was reactive on test slopes. Found strong over weak layering with faceted snow and large advanced depth hoar. In a test pit got a heavy slab to propagate over a crust that failed below on weak faceted snow down 80cm. Chose simple terrain below 30 degrees and avoided terrain traps. The snowpack right now has the potential to produce large destructive avalanches with the right trigger. There has not been a large enough load for a crush and flush, or real natural avalanche cycle on these deeper persistent weak layers. So you won't see signs of avalanche activity but that doesn't mean conditions are good to go, dig down to assess the layers and see for yourself. 

Cleared up through the day. Light south wind. Incredible winter skies.

10cm of new snow was wind-packed, or drifted the higher up you went. Lower down test slopes were reactive and released 30cm soft slabs. Near a settlement, or whump the supportable surface slab was over a pocket of rotted-out weak facets. In a thin spot where the wind scoured slopes soft under drifted snow there was a pocket of large grain advanced depth hoar. Dug a test pit at 4,000' on the NE-aspect 180cm total snow depth and a few small crusts in the top 50cm. The Nov. 17 "big warmup" layer was a hard melt-freeze crust sandwich with 1-2mm facets in between. It failed under the crust and propagated on an extended column test ECTP 25 down 80cm. At the ground 25cm of barely refrozen 6-9mm advanced depth hoar.