Tatoosh Range: Castle Peak/ Foss Peak/ Butter Creek

The recent snow seems to be showing signs of gaining strength. Evidence of unstable snow is becoming harder to find, but the variable wind loading pattern from this storm kept us a bit more conservative in wind loaded terrain. We weren't quite ready to trust some of these hard wind slabs. A pair of natural wind slab avalanches that we found later in the day, seemed to support our decision even if they were two days old. 

Not very many signs of instability. See snowpack comments.

-The snowpack was impressively cold and dry on all aspects and elevations during our travels. You could feel a bit of warming on more southerly slopes, but the snow was still soft. 

-About a foot (30cm) of recent storm snow from the weekend covers the 1/10 crust. This was consistent by aspect above 5500ft. However, interestingly within the recent snow, there were additional strong crusts on more shaded aspects, but they were noticeably absent on southerlies. So far, we don't have a great explanation for this, but it was consistent in numerous handpits, uptrack tests, and snow profiles. 

-There are some weaker grains in the recent storm snow. They mostly consist of decomposing stellar arms that show subtle signs of faceting. However, other than a few uptrack tests that failed, other snowpack tests didn't demonstrate any meaningful results. 

-Wind Loading: Drifts, textured surfaces, and scouring were all present and on nearly every aspect. We couldn't dicern any repeatable pattern to the recent wind loading in our area. Sometimes the same slope would show evidence of opposing wind directions. 

-Wet Loose: High clouds rolled in pretty quickly during the morning and put and end to any wet loose issues before they could arise.