Observation: Cutler Ridge

I was in the west desert for last weekend's storm, so this was general assessment day for me to suss out the snowpack and what I perceive as a fair amount of spatial variability. Dug first on ENE aspect at 6800 feet and found 146cm total snow with 5cm fresh on top. 72cm above the ground was evidence of what I believe was the old rime crust, but this was quite thin and not very crusty anymore, so a bit harder to identify (blue line in photo). There was also a 5cm thick basal ice crust at 10cm above the ground with wet rounding facets below.

Dug a second pit on a NW aspect at 8400ft. Total snow depth was 185cm and we dug down into about 130cm of this. There was again faint evidence of an old interface around 140cm above the ground (blue line). Interestingly, there was 10 to 15cm of P hard snow just under this. Otherwise, the snow was cohesive with a consistent gradation from F to 1F from the surface downward.

Snow surface was a mixed bag. Low elevation snow was quite dense, sometimes damp, varied in supportability, and featured breakable wind crust. Solar aspects hadn't seen much sun at the time of our exit but while they were soft on the uptrack, some were already sporting thin zipper crusts on the downhill. The couple inches of new snow seemed to largely be rimed forms, on top of wind affected snow beneath. The best riding was found on mid elevation, sheltered, lower angle slopes where the wind affected snow was supportive and made for fast skiing through the couple inches of yesterday's new snow on top.