Quick report
Generally pretty straightforward. Along ridgelines and mid-elevation terrain features that allowed snow to drift, we could find signs of drifting snow and texture along the surface. Today, we could not see any instability within the drifted snow, such as cracking or collapsing.
Looked briefly at the new snow, old snow interface on a North Aspect near 10,000’ - about 5” of low-density snow sitting atop a supportable crust that was easy to push off. Skiers and riders have reported slow, long-running sluffing in steep terrain. The new snow is not bonding well with the old snow surface in many areas, leading to these long-running sluffs.
The snow surface continues to weaken as we continue to have cold, clear nights. Almost all aspects had facets on the surface. While this made for decent riding, this could become an issue depending on what happens over the next few days. The temperatures are beginning to increase a bit, which should help some with the surface faceting, but I would guess that the cold nights will continue to weaken the surface. Avalanche danger will increase once we add a load to this weakened surface. Until then, travel was generally easy, and there was soft, enjoyable riding. Small sluffing below solar rockbands
Snowpack
After three days of cold, clear nights, the snow surface has begun weakening on almost every aspect and elevation. Along the ridgelines is a bit of a wind crust and texture on the surface. Out of the wind zone, at mid and upper elevations, we could find soft, low-density snow sitting atop varying crusts and supportable layers.
Weak surface snow
Wind texture