Mt. Judah

With one more day of clear weather before the next storm, we decided to look at what surfaces tomorrow's storm snow will accumulate on top of. We found widespread intact surface hoar (fragile feathery snow crystals) to the summit of Mt. Judah today. Ski cuts and turns caused small shallow sluffs in the surface hoar, which was not a problem today. However, it indicated how today's surface layer will become tomorrow's weak layer. This surface hoar sat on top of a few inches of soft snow above a crust or directly on the crust in some spots. 

Aside from the surface hoar and the potential problem that will happen if it gets buried tonight, we did not see other signs of instability. We found variable snow surfaces with exposed crusts along the ridges and some places below the ridges where the thin layer of softer snow had been scraped off the rain crust.