Glen Alps Recreation Area

The cold, calm, clear weather has caused near-surface faceting at the surface and pockets of surface hoar growth in wind sheltered area. While this is not a problem now, we are noting that when this layer becomes buried that could becoming a weak layer within the snowpack.  There continues to be sparse coverage with snowdepth ranging from 2" of storm snow to up to 3' of snow in windloaded gullies and high alpine bowls.  We dug a pit next to "the wind tunnel." The wind tunnel is a common reoccuring slidepath in the Chugach State Park adjcent to the Flattop hiking trail.  This slidepath often gets wind loaded has caused multiple near misses. It did look like there were signs of debris from small, natural windslab avalanches in the wind tunnel area.  We observed 2" of new snow on the surface on top of a thick melt-freeze crust.  We did continue to get concerning test results- one on the layer of upper facets (ECTP13) and one concerning test result at the base of the snowpack (ECTP17). However, there have been a lot of people getting out in the Chugach State Park right now with no documented human triggered avalanches in several weeks. We are still monitoring these two weak layers and keeping them in the back of our mind and in our decision making process.