Crudbusters

Found some 4 finger refaceted snow at valley floors.  Snow changed quickly once on slope to wind stripped in most areas with many raised tracks and and 6-12 inch pencil -knife hard sastrugi.  Cross loaded gullies had smooth knife hard wind slabs that were unreactive.  Windward slopes showed the beginning signs of breaking down (faceting), although ski penetration was still only ~ 1 cm.  Leeward slopes (windslabs) had not yet begun to break down and were still knife hard with 0 ski penetration.  Stability was very good with no signs of instability.

No signs of instability present

Found surface snow to be heavily damaged by wind with pencil-knife hard  surfaces present in most locations.  Sastrugi was present on windward slopes with unreactive wind slabs observed in crossloaded gullies.

 

At~3600' on a north aspect/ 25° slope found a total snow height of 120cms(4 feet).  The top 70 cms were right side up with good strength, fair structure and no propagation.  While the bottom 50 cms had poor structure, strength and showed propagation.  Only one interface in the top 70cms was observed with a clean shear (Q1).  This was down 30 cms and was unreactive in stability tests.  In the lower 50 cms, multiple weak layers exist in between old rain crusts from October/ November, with some large developed facets present.

 

 Snowpack has been faceting in this location during the recent dry spell that began on 2/20.  With the entire snowpack showing some degree of faceting.  Comparing this pit to one dug in close proximity 6 weeks ago shows that the October facets that were earlier found to be rounding (gaining strength) are once again moving towards faceting (losing strength). Pit results produced ECTX and PST END (35/100) down 90 cms.