Marmot

With elevated winds in the forecast for the weekend, we wanted to assess how much of the recent snow is still available for transport. What we found was nice settled snow, good conditions, and quality light. The recent snow has had a chance to settle out and take on a little body, and this has helped improve riding conditions for a more consistent experience. What it means moving ahead is likely less snow overall will be available for transport, and it's going to take a bit more wind to build drifts or slabs as the winds increase. We also wanted to continue tracking some persistent weak layers that exist deeper in the snowpack, generally on more leeward aspects. While we're still finding poor structure in many locations, the potential and likelihood of encountering this problem remains low. 

We dug on both the Southeast and West aspects of the Marmot ridge right around 4000 ft. On the easterly aspect, we found a shallow snowpack of less than 40cm, with thin remnants of wind slab from early December and about 5 inches of settled snow from this most recent storm. The rain crust we picked up with this storm was intact but brittle. On the westerly aspect, we found a little healthier snowpack, with a total height of a meter. Column tests indicated the potential for failure both at the new snow / old snow interface, and deeper in the snowpack on a layer of basal facets. No tests resulted in propagation.