Quick report
Riding has improved greatly! Although today was well below freezing, the new snow is higher density and really pasted onto surfaces. As a result, I didn't get any results in handshears and found a strong bond with the March 4 crust (probably since rain helped glue it together at the onset of the storm). There was noone else riding today so the meadows are prime for the weekend crews.
The denser snow was less available for transport, but I still saw graupel and new snow in saltation along the surface.
If it had only been the new snow, I might have stepped out my terrain choices, but with the surface hoar lurking, I avoided slopes over 30 degrees.
None observed.Weather
- Cloud Cover
- overcast
- Wind Loading
- moderate
- Recent Snowfall
- 30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Rime on the goggles and flat light made for some challenging riding, but by late afternoon, the sun broke through the clouds. Winds were in the moderate range out of the W and NW. Moments of intense graupeling.
Snowpack
At both 6580' E and 6600' W, I could not find the Valentine's day buried surface hoar. There was 125cm of total snow at the first site. The 30cm of storm snow failed in a compression test, but only as a resistant planar result, CTH22 (RP) dn 30.
At 6800' WNW, towards the end of the Flagstaff ridge, I found the Valentine's buried surface hoar down about 2 feet, with sudden results. CTH22 (SC) x2 dn 63. There was a 1F hard slab above it and below it. In all these sites, I found the entire upper snowpack above the January facets to be moist, likely from the prolonged warm temps earlier this week. Below this recent foot of storm snow, a 4cm or 2" melt freeze crust is Pencil-hard, buried on March 4th.