Quick report
I went on a tour to the floor of Huntington Ravine this morning with the intent to observe the impact of the rain/warming event from March 5th-6th. I found mostly firm, refrozen surfaces with small pockets of soft, windblown snow. The Huntington Fire Road still has great coverage and is fast and (mostly) fun. I was able to make out 3/4 of the ravine despite consistent low-hanging clouds. Comparing my photos to those from March 4th, I was pleasantly surprised to observe that for the most part, there is still plenty of snow. The choke in Central is still hanging on to some snow, but Odell's is almost completely back to a climb. The Harvard Bulge is also looking significantly taller given the loss of snow in the fan. The boulder field in the fan is also much more prominent. After skiing, it appeared as if most of the rain hit the surface of the snow and ran off, creating weird, firm skiing but preserving most of the snowpack in Huntington. I then traversed over to the Little Headwall, where I was surprised to find pretty soft turns in the trees. I also observed a small but building windslab climber's right of Little Headwall that was approximately 8-10 cm thick, well-connected, and building. The 4F slab lacked any real energy but was trending cohesive and not well bonded to the rain crust below. I see this as evidence of an increasing wind-slab problem that aligned with the current forecast's claim that the most likely place to find a new wind slab was on steep easterly aspects late in the day where the terrain provides shelter from the wind. While it was mostly calm when I began skiing at 1030, winds out of the NW and snow increased around 1145 and it was snowing pretty consistently in the parking lot around 2pm with moderate winds.