Quartz Peak

We found about 8 inches of new snow around 5,000 feet and closer to a foot around 6,000 feet and higher. The new snow is dense with fairly uniform layering but becomes more inverted as you gain elevation. Places where you find this inverted slab layering are where the odds are higher to trigger an avalanche.

Today's storm snow concerns were focused to areas with an inverted slab layering - 1F snow over 4F snow. Below the storm snow is a soft (1F-) layer of previously wetted poly grains from warm temperatures earlier in the week. This layer does not appear to have undergone a solid refreeze before getting buried. While it took moderate force to produce a failure in tests in these poly grains, it seems like a suspect interface once surface wetting of the new snow takes hold. Below the poly grain layer, we found around 5 to 10 cm of harder snow that sits directly on the rainy period snowpack (March 16 to 21). The majority of avalanche activity is likely to be confined to snowpack layers above the rainy period snowpack/ refrozen mass. While we could feel the inverted slab across the majority of slopes we traveld on around 5,800 feet and above, we did not observe propagating failures in ECTs. However, we did observe non-propagating failures in ECTs with easy to moderate force. The breaks occurred around 15 to 20 cm below the surface. Warmer temperatures and sun over the weekend is expected to help stiffen the overall slab and could give it the right stiffness over softer layers to become more reactive. Additionally, long-running wet loose slides could be the natural nudge to help provoke a more dangerous slab avalanche - especailly on sunny slopes. Cornices continue to grow with each storm and sag a bit more with each nice, warmer period in between.