Mt. Snoqualmie

It wasn't hard to find signs of instability today. Most steep features we traveled on moved snow in one way or another. If it wasn't shallow slabs failing at our ski tips, it was loose graupel moving downhill. It was blowing so hard at one point that tree branches were breaking and falling around us - one way too close for comfort. The wind and continued precipitation was enough to fill in our skin track or avalanche crowns in what was essentially a matter of minutes.  The stormy weather prevented getting good views around the valley to determine if any big avalanches failed this week. We did travel notice some old avalanche debris under steep rocky terrain that was quickly getting buried. 

It was easy to trigger small pockets on convexities or unsupported test slopes. A few of these were large enough to call D1 avalanches.

I dug down to the Solstice Crust in 2 locations to look at our deeper layers of concern. The bottom line is that they're still concerning. Deep tap tests and modified extended column tests (DECT?) on the Solstice Crust repeatedly produced sudden collapse results. It is currently 4 feet below the surface in both locations I dug (120 and 121 cm).

There are other crusts above the Solstice, some of which produced inconsistent results. With so much blowing snow, it was hard to throw a loup on failure grains today. Within the new snow, plenty of interstorm layers popped out during tests, some around the most recent temperature crust from Monday. There was plenty of graupel on the surface today, and another layer of it a few inches down, likely from yesterday at some point.