Skyline Ridge

My goals for today were to identify and assess the 2/13 interface, where recent snow buried well-documented weak snow, and to observe any wet-loose avalanche activity. The day started out with clear skies, and slopes in the sun quickly became moist, but before they could be tipped over the edge into wet loose avalanches, the high clouds rolled back in. This left sunny slopes with a breakable melt-freeze crust on the surface. As for the 2/13 interface, it's seemed quite hard to pick out visually in the pit wall, but showed up clearly in formal and informal snowpack tests. This weak layer consists of mixed grain types, and while it produced easy, planar shears, there just isn't enough snow over the layer to be a widespread avalanche problem. But we'll certainly be tracking it moving forward, assuming it snows again. 

Snow Surface Summary
Sunny slopes have a surface crust around 1cm thick with soft snow beneath and a dusting of graupel and rimed stellars on the surface. Shady slopes hold soft, dry snow surfaces. Areas at low and mid-elevations in the forest are still mostly refrozen, chunky surfaces, with a dusting of new snow. Some easterly aspects didn't have a crust, but got slightly moist before the cloud cover thickened. 

Snowpack Summary
The upper snowpack consists of recent snow and some notable crust and weak layers down to the January Drought Layer. There is 10-14cm of recent snow over the 2/13 interface, which in many areas is a thin layer of small-grained surface hoar mixed with faceted grains and decomposing particles. This interface failed easily with clean shears in stability tests. The 2/13 interface is 1-6cm above the 1-2cm-thick 2/7 crust, buried 17-25cm. Below the 2/7 is a small layer of faceted grains over the January Drought Layer (1/28), buried 17-25cm deep. 

Snow Profiles
E aspect, 5150ft
HS 255cm
2/13↓10cm
2/7 ↓11cm
January Drought ↓17cm 
STE ↓10cm & ↓13cm (See Photo)
CTM  SC ↓10cm & ↓13cm

N aspect, 5350ft
HS 255cm
2/13↓14cm
2/7 ↓19cm
January Drought ↓23cm 
STE ↓14cm