Castle Area

We found mostly wind-affected snow in the Castle area. Sheltered NNE aspects were still skiing well with some soft snow. The top 5 cm of steep, south-facing slopes were becoming moist, and moderate SW winds and cloud cover were keeping all other surface snow cool even though the temperatures were warm. Freezing levels were around 2000m. We did a few tests to see how newer wind slabs were bonding to previous surfaces and had some resistant results down 25 cm where a softer layer of snow is sandwiched between two harder wind-pressed layers.