Mt. Emmons

Traveled through several avalanche start zones facing north to northeast and persistent slab structures had either previously avalanched, been eroded by winds, or faceted away; any slabs that we encountered were rare and discontinuous across slopes. A crown profile above an old persistent slab avalanche in Climax Chutes produced hard, propagating results on depth hoar about 2 feet deep.   The snowpack is weak on northerly aspects and will entrain old snow once it gets moving with shallow storm instabilities, especially on old bedsurfaces.  Crusts on mid to low-elevation southerlies are thick enough that I don't anticipate collapsing crust issues with this weekend's storm; any instabilities will be above the crust.  

No cracking or collapsing.

On southerly aspects, N/BTL: The 1 cm of new snow last night moistened and is bonded well to crusts below about 10,800'.  Above that, the new snow was still dry and not adhering well to the crust; could be a storm or wind slab failure layer if it facets tonight and doesn't get cooked tomorrow.  Crusts were 3 to 8 cm thick and mostly supportive to skis; it would take a major loading event for them to collapse on the small-grained facets below.

On northerly aspects, N/BTL:  Snow surfaces are weak and faceting everywhere.  The weakest snow is on old bedsurfaces or terrain eroded by northerly winds, where snowdepths are shallow (<50 cm).  We found the 12/7 surface hoar layer in tact at 11,300'.  Depth hoar grains are 2.5-3 mm, fist hard, and slightly rounded at the base of the snowpack (where it didn't avalanche away during the 12/3 cycle)

On east aspects BTL:  On the one steep slope we crossed, there was a very thin, collapsible crust over facets on the snow surface.