Fresno

We toured up a ridge on Fresno further north than we normally do to check conditions. We found a few inches of soft snow from last weeks storm that varied in depth. Sometimes it was sitting on old faceted snow from the storm on March 6 and sometimes it was sitting on a wind slab. We found good stability in our snowpit tests and no sign of new avalanches except one small new wet loose on a west facing slope.  It seems like the weak snow that is buried under a wind slab in many places in Summit Lake is adjusting to the load and it has become unlikely that the weight of a person could trigger an avalanche. This could change with a new load of wind, precipitation, or rapid warming event.

At the road level there was about 3" of settled new snow above 6" of facets above the Feb. 10 crust. There was soft snow in most places as we climbed, but the depth varied with wind effect. Once we popped out of the trees there was a noticable wind layer below the new snow that was thin at first and grew in thickness as we climbed. This layer was highly variable in it's location and did not seem to be connected across the slope. There was weak snow below that layer where we found it. The first snowpit was at 3,300' on a northeast facing slope. We got stable results (ECTN18 above the wind slab that was 18cm down). There was about 8" of soft snow above a wind slab that was thin in this location (3cm). Below that was all faceted grains, but they were mostly 1F or P hard with a few thin layers of 4F visible in the pit photo. We dug a second pit at 3,850' on a northwest facing slope. The wind slab was a few inches of soft faceting snow above a wind slab that was 10" thick. Below the wind slab was a layer of weak snow (5cm of facets, 4F .5-1mm) that did not react in our tests (ECTX).