Observation: Hoyt Peak

I wanted to have a look at the low elevation snow around Hoyt Peak. Traveled from the valley bottom to about 9600 ft. Still a bit thin down low but not too bad considering. About 43" of total snow at 8600 ft. The weakest interface is on the old December snow surface which I've been finding in other areas I've traveled. Pit tests failed with medium effort and propagated across the column leaving a smooth shear plane on 1mm-2mm faceted grains. Of note was that the December snow slab was quite a bit firmer (1F hardness) than what I have been finding up Weber Canyon at higher elevations. The early January snow and most recent snow interface is another weakness in the pack and produced clean shears but failed with harder effort. No feedback from the snowpack as we were walking around; no cracking or collapsing. Winds were picking up towards the end of the day and were reaching terrain well off the ridgelines and into valley bottoms. It felt like low moderate danger in the area traveled which was in gentle, lower elevation terrain. The snowpack setup is still worrisome if you are headed into steeper terrain or into the wind zone. New snow instabilities have settled out. Looking ahead, it doesn't look like there is any new snow forecasted for the near future so the snowpack is slowly going to relax and adjust to the snow from earlier in the week. Low temps are forecasted to be in the teens so we'll once again need to keep an eye on the current snow surface and see what happens before our next storm.

Mostly soft powder snow with a little solar affect felt on low elevation terrain. Fast and bouncy.