Observation: Garden City Bowls

Photo below showing the snowpit wall. Where the card is placed a couple inches below the surface is the bottom of a weak old snow interface with broken stellar crystals and older sugary snow crystals from prior to the last couple of inches of new snow. Total height was 97cm ( 3'). Snowpack is showing signs of improved stability with ECT (extended column tests) having harder results (ECTP21@0). The temperature gradients (red line in the snowpit above) show a very strong temperature gradient in the upper snowpack. We also noted sparkly near surface facets on all aspects and in the bottom photo you can see the sparkly near surface facets reflecting back at the camera. On West facing slopes these NSF were starting to deteriorate when we skied out.

Photo of snow surface showing sparkly near surface facets with Bear Lake in the background.

Snow surface was about an inch of new snow mixed with near surface facets sitting on a pencil + hard melt-freeze crust on west facing slopes. North and east facing slopes were about an inch of new snow mixed with near surface facets on a slightly less hard crust.