Zoa Sub-Peak Snowpack

Skied Zoa today. Just enough coverage to skin from the car and ski back to the car. Weather was generally cloudy with periods of clearing skies and periods of light rain. Toured to 1800m ish on the subpeak before Zoa and never broke through the snow line. Snow was heavy and wet on top of rain crust but good enough for a second lap.

Weather was mostly overcast with periods of rain and a few short clearing periods throughout our day. Wind was mostly calm with a few periods of light South wind. Did not bring a thermometer to make precise observations but temperatures felt a couple of degrees above freezing the whole time we were there.

Dug a snow pit near the sub peak before Zoa peak proper. Pit was located on a NW aspect 18 deg slope near the top of the ridge in the treeline eleation band and height of snowpack was 95cm. Snow Profile: 0cm 4 finger unconsolidated 20cm Knife hard crust 21cm Pencil hard 26cm Knife hard crust 27cm 1 finger rounds 36cm Knife hard crust 37cm 1 finger rounds 47cm Surface hoar 48cm 1 finger rounds 95cm The snow is generally wet and heavy, mostly well bonded with several crusts in the upper half and little evidence of slab formation at our test location. Did not see any signs of significant facetting at ground level at this location. We conducted two compression tests with the following results: 1st test: CT M8 (uneven break) 20cm down on top of the crust 2nd test: CT M2 (uneven break) 20cm down on top of crust CT H7 (sudden planar) 47cm down on surface hoar layer