Cracked Ice

There was only a couple of inches of dry snow on a rain crust at the parking lot with moist snow beneath.  Dry snow quickly increased to 10-12 inches by 1900' that was insulating  1-2 feet of moist snow that existed up to ~2500'.   

Above 2500' moist snow slowly went away, and settled new snow from last weekend was between 100-150 cms, however, the interface was difficult to detect due to a right side up homogenous upper/mid snowpack.  Above 3500' the top 5 cms of snow was slightly stiffer due to light previous wind effect.  No signs of instability were present,  new snow was right side up along the majority of route.  

Pit results at 3600'/ North aspect produced ECTN1 down 5 cms and ECTN20 down 25 cms ,Height of snow was 335cms.   Right side up and no clean shears in the top 125 cms

Pit results at 5000'/ North aspect produced ECTN1 down 5cms, ECTN17 down 20cms, and ECTN20 down 30 cms.  Right side up and no clean shears in the top 125 cms.  Height of snow was 340cms.  Using an avalanche probe did not reveal any significant density changes in the snowpack in both pits.

No signs of instability aside from the significant amount of natural and artillery triggered avalanches that occurred on 1/11-13.