Two Ocean

~20 cm of snow in the last 24 hours. The top 5 cm is beautiful, low density, stellar dendrite snow that appears to have fallen straight out of the sky. New snow appears to have bonded well to the old snow surface and was resistant in hand shears.

My biggest layer of concern is about 30 cm from the snow surface and is the very weak snow surface that was buried on 1/23. In some locations this is preserved surface hoar, in others it is very weak facets, and in others it is neither, instead well bonded cohesive snow. That is why I think things could get rather tricky if we start rapidly loading this snowpack. The pattern will be hard to pick up on since old snow surfaces are variable. So far, slopes that are below treeline and generally sheltered from the wind and sun are most suspect. Naturally we want to figure out a pattern and continue to whittle away where the problem is, but due to the highly variable distribution, that sort of thinking could catch us off guard. When snow starts adding up, giving this problem a wide berth for a little while will likely be the best course of action.

This is not an issue today, but with snow in the forecast, it could be later this week.

Recent snow has not been enough to push the snow that was buried on 1/23 over the edge yet, but there are some signs that it could happen. I expirienced subtle, yet rumbling collapses today. Digging down I found buried preserved surface hoar. I did not find this exact setup everywhere, but there are many places where very weak surface snow was preserved and could be problematic with was a greater load.