Tuckerman Ravine

Found terrain in Tuckerman Ravine to be quite spatially variable. Upper start zones were mostly scoured and wind textured. Lower in gullies, isolated wind slabs were observed in terrain as larger, rounded pillows. These areas of concern are easy to identify and avoid.

In Huntington Ravine observed overall low snow and a lot of exposed rocks in the fan.

Observed avalanches in Left Gully, Summer Lion Head, Boot Spur Ridge, and Cathedral.These avalanches are all observed from afar with very little information available. There was no debris visible to help have a more accurate sizing so these are rough estimates of size and scale. The time of these is also unknown.

Southern aspects were getting a lot of solar warming with clear skies and the solar seemed to be prompting settling and bonding within the snowpack. As previous observations have mentioned, there are numerous wind slabs stacked on top of each other on top of a stout melt-freeze crust. 

We did a hasty pit and an ECT to the right of Right Gully and found 70-80 cm of snow on top of the melt-freeze crust. There were subtle hand hardness changes within the various interfaces of wind slab. We found the wind slab to be 1F+ to P in hand hardness, with thin sections of 4F. 

With prolonged cold temperatures, one of the things we were looking for were near crust facets. We did not find any. This was a solar aspect, but today was the first day with warming and ample sunshine.

Found stubborn to hard results with our ECT with ECTN15 down 15 ECTN21 down 40 ECTN24 down 47 ECTN27 down 54 (see picture). Hand shears were spatially variable with most being stubborn. We climbed part of Right Gully to assess the rounded wind slab and found increased sensitivity here with hand shears failing on isolation. The snow was softer in this area and was deeper. Above this convexity the snow became more shallow and more unconsolidated and loose on top of the melt-freeze crust.