Powderhouse Peak

I went up to PowderHouse Peak today. Blizzard like conditions with intense snowfall, intense winds and low visibility. Snowfall rate averaged S2 + throughout the day. Seemed like the early afternoon snow rates intensified. For most of my way up, wind directions were out of the NE, going up slope. Small wind features and skin tracks were getting cross loaded, filled up and built. I dug two pits along the way and had some propagating results in my extended column test within the new snow at 9200' on NW aspect. One failure at 25 cm down and the other at 40 cm down. My descent snowboarding was mostly enjoyable; in steeper locations, I saw multiple cracks shoot out and storm slab snow would build up and entrench but move down hill slowly.  Any flat zones would cause you to lose speed and sink into the deep snow. I was only able to make it 2/3 of the way down. When the topography flattened out near the bottom, I had to finish my descent on skis along with other parties that I met up with. The conditions were almost too deep in this location today. 

Storm slabs were reactive in steeper areas with cracking and entrenchment moving slowly down hill.

I dug two pits today. The first one was at 8200' on a N aspect. There was 30 to 40 cm a new snow at 1100.  The snow was unconsolidated and light. There was facets still below both the February 10 and January 1 crusts. They  were slightly moist/ dry and noncompressible facets. My compression test had no result at this location on any layers.

My second pit profile was at 9200 feet on a NW aspect. There was about 100 cm of new snow at this location. Some of that was due to recent wind loading near the summit. There was multiple density changes within the new snow. I had several breaks within my compression test within the new snow. Nothing completely planar but certainly showing initiation.  My extended column resulted in two seperate  layers showing propagation, one scoring an ECTP3 at 25 cm down and another ECTP7 at 40 cm down. There was not much of a crust at the February 10th  interface, the facets were dry and noncompressible. The February 10th layer did show some weakness in my compression test with a CT 24. The extended column test did not result anything on this layer.