Skyscraper 4200'

Throughout our tour we experienced a plethora of conditions including shallow rocky terrain that was only bootable, bottomless weak sugary facets, and nice consolidated 6 day old powder sitting on firm or deteriorating old wind slabs. We did not experience any red flags today other than isolated cracking.  The biggest hazards are still rocks and shrubs. 

Very isolated cracking (see photo). This was only observable in areas where storm snow from 11/15-16 had settled and behaved like a soft slab or in steep terrain where lingering wind effect was observed. None of these surface instabilities propagated and were isolated. No new avalanches were observed.

The snowpack remains a mix of facets to the ground at lower elevations, and storm snow over a variety of buried persistent slabs (formed by the wind) and crusts with a variety of strength. We observed that the buried wind slabs in Eldorado Bowl have shown signs of weakening and faceting in the last week (since we last observed there on 11/14). 

We did hunt out an area on the Sunnyside of Skyscraper SSW aspect, 4250' on a 35 deg slope that demonstrated how a shallow snowpack HS 60cm, poor structure and a more stout slab could interact. While this setup is isolated, it is not impossible to find at ridge tops (see below). During an ECT test, we had propagation ECTP1 20cm down from the surface failing under the persistent slab sitting on weak facets.