Quick report
I made a rocket run up to the Divide today to take a look at our PWLs and get a sense of the recent wind loading and current surfaces heading into an active storm period. We found plenty of wind effect, even though we didn't get very high in the terrain or into exposed areas. We got some localized cracking in drifts near rocks, but overall, the slabs where we traveled were stubborn, likely due to the warm temps. The snow surface is variable but has settled considerably in recent days. Still, good skiing was found in areas without tracks on the Divide. On the sun-exposed apron of Chair Peak, we could feel a melt-freeze crust a little below the surface on our descent.
Weather
Almost seemed like the sun wanted to come out this morning before it clouded over. We were out of the field about 1:00 and some light precip was just starting up. Generally very little wind except on the lake and the top of the Divide where it was light.
Snowpack
The upper snowpack is a bit variable, with wind-affected snow, areas of well-settled powder, and firm crusts from either sun exposure or wind scouring.
In my pit location (N 4760') there was a layer of buried surface hoar 8-10cm below the surface. It popped in compression, shear, and tilt tests but didn't have a stiff enough slab over it to propagate in an ECT. [CT2, ECTN3]
I also got the 1/10 complex to fail in a compression test CT22 SC
Overall, the snowpack and our PWLs look fairly the same as they have over the past week, but there may be some improvement in the JDL. Or maybe it was just a wind-exposed location where the JDL wasn't as prominent to begin with... hard to say.
Avalanche
No new avalanches observed