Mount Emmons

In this area, storm totals reached 7 inches by the early afternoon.  Sheltered terrain skied pretty nice on the south side of the compass with just enough new snow to keep turns feeling soft.  Drifted snow was clearly sensitive with shooting cracks and small, triggered Wind Slabs.  

Cracking occurred where the winds drifted snow. The typical leeward features along the Red Lady skin track has little drifting as we passed by midday. On our descent, we found several drifts on an east feature at 11,000 feet and intentionally triggered 2 small avalanches. Drifts up to 16" deep didn't extend far down the slope.

Our goal was to check on the new snow and wind drifting.  The typical places along the Red Lady skin track hadn't formed Wind Slabs around midday up through 11,900 feet.  Once we found drifts in other places, cracks were easy to produce, and we triggered a couple of small avalanches on drifted east features..  Avalanches failed about an inch up from the old crust.  Sheltered areas, with 7 inches of new snow, showed no signs of instability outside of some minor sluffing.

I dug a quick profile on an east-southeast feature at 11,300 feet (115 degrees) and found meltwater from last week's warm-up drained through the entire snowpack around 130cm deep.  Ice columns were present throughout.  Columns in the midwinter and December drought layers were quite thin due to the weak faceted grains, allowing the meltwater to drain quickly.  I don't suspect any future Wet Slab issues with this structure as weak layers have been wetted, but the thinness of the ice columns is something I haven't encountered much before.