Surprise Faces

Traveled up to the Surprise weather station to clear the interval board. 19" of snow and 3.3" of SWE, last cleared on 12/24

Temperature inversion kept surfaces cool at lower elevations. The sun was moistening steeper sunny slopes by mid-morning, aided by warmer temperatures above 8000 feet. By the time we skied out around 1 pm, surfaces were a little sticky, but skiing improved in the shade and the lower we got. No wind effect where we travelled up to 9700' - surfaces exposed to the wind had some texture but remained soft. Very steep sunny slopes at upper elevations had shed a good amount of loose snow on the surface, most of which probably occurred yesterday.

The 12/26 crust existed up to 9600' where we dug, although pole probing revealed it was stronger/thicker at lower elevations. The crust ranged in depth from 6-8 inches at lower elevations to 12 -14 inches at middle elevations.  We dug on an east aspect below the Pinnacle weather station, where there was some wind loading. In this location, the crust was buried 26 inches (65cm).

Results: ECTN 22 down 14" (36 cm), ECTN 28 down 20" (52 cm) PST 30/100 END in the decomposing and fragmented particles. We did not observe any facets surrounding the 12/26 crust.