Needle trees

Twas the shortest day of the year all around a holiday cheer With a promise of powdery snow A rare gift, as many coastal people know. But wait! A weak layer! Or maybe two?! At variable depths?! What could we do?! We dug and we dug until our diggers were sore. We made observations, then we made some more. With the forecast in one hand, in the other our hopes We found sweet turns on low angle slopes So much can inform us on what’s good and what’s bad And with safety in mind, there is fun to be had

Shown in photo 2 - a crown a couple feet below the tracks of some riders above us. Some similar activity around other tracks.

Light winds BTL but, in open areas and at TL, certainly stronger! Approx 5-10cm snowfall per hour. Heavier at times.

Our snowpack observations were taken just out of the dense trees, nearing Treeline. We found the crust down 80cm (see photo 3) but produced no results in our compression test. Down 45cm, we found the surface hoar layer and, although we had some very easy shovel shears on it, it produced no compression test results. The upper 30cm seemed to be the most reactive. Photo 1 shows failure on a layer down 20-25cm (the depth when we dug around 11:30). By 1:30, approx 10cm has accumulated and was highly reactive (shown in photo 2). These 2 layers really wanted to get movin’ I would suspect that, if given the chance, could motivate a deeper instability to join in the movement. The riding BTL was great! The crust could definitely be felt under the fresh snow, but not icy/frozen solid - made for fun turns! Back at the car, we had the delight of digging out my car from under 40cm of low-density snow. By early afternoon, this new snow was forming a slab and blocking around our skis.