Mt. Hood Meadows

We found some minor instabilities in wind-drifted snow and roughly 8-10 inches of new snow over a prominent melt-freeze crust buried on Jan 3rd.  We generally have a strong snowpack, and any upcoming instabilities will occur at or above the 1/3 melt-freeze crust. While riding has improved with recent accumulations, the snowpack remains thin with lots of rocks, creeks, and krumholtz littering avalanche paths in the canyons. 

We picked up around 8-10 inches of recent snowfall, resting on a 2-3 cm-thick supportable melt-freeze crust above 6000 ft that was buried on Jan 3rd.  At lower and mid elevations, this interface appeared as a thinner crust or as wet grains.  In general, the snowpack is strong and right-side-up below this crust.

Above this 1/3 melt freeze crust is where I got a few planar results w/ CT's & STT's .

Some results from a test profile on a NE @ 6500 ft:

• CTEx2, SP 25 cm down on a layer of 1 mm DF's
• ECTN12, 25 cm down on the same layer of 1 mm DF's.
• A couple tilt tests also easily highlighted this layer.

These all failed a couple cm's above the 1/3 crust. These weren't super concerning today, but may be worth keeping an eye on with additional loading weight in coming days. 

Snowpack depths remain shallow for early January below 6500 ft. Probing around in more sheltered terrain, I typically found an average of 90 cm between 6-6500 ft. Wind drifted areas hold much deeper HS's and a mere 1-2 ft exist across lower elevations.