Forestdale/Blue Lakes

We snowmobiled in the Forestdale/Blue Lakes area today. Yesterday's storm delivered ~20cm of new snow. The surface snow was  slightly wind pressed in BTL terrain and scoured, sculpted and glazed over above that, this made for variable sled conditions. The weather was pretty benign for most of the day with clear skies, cold temps and light winds that did increase around noon. Light transporting snow was obeserved out of the SW in ATL terrain. We dug a pit on  N/NW aspect around 8300'. The profile showed mostly 4F+ snow throughout with a few crusts within. Formal pit tests resulted in no remarkable results within the top 100cms. We did have a very stubborn result in the shovel tilt that did reveal a graupel layer at the bottom of the recent snow. As we traveled around, our sleds did not produce an signs of movement in the snow on small wind loaded test slopes.

Two rain crusts near the surface - both had percolation tubes under them and decent bonding with the snow above them. The more recent crust had graupel above, with non-planar moderate-->stubborn hand shears and shovel tilts. We dug to the Dec 12th facets which were almost 1 Finger hard and clumping together. Formal tests were non-reactive