Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
There was about 4" of new light snow at my starting point at 5300' and 7-8" up higher, depending on the aspect. The new snow cracked under my skis, but the slabs were soft and not cohesive. No noise or collapsing. Foggy with a light breeze all day. Skied a couple runs on WNW aspects, in wind sheltered trees. The new snow bridged the crusts well, making for excellent turns. Dug a quick pit in between the two runs at about 6,600'. West-facing. While the larger crusts were obvious by just looking at the pit wall, there are many small crusts throughout the pack. CT4@ 7" (New snow on first crust which is about 3mm thick), CT7@10" (another 3mm crust), and CT 12@16". Unconsolidated facets between the layers. The most concerning layer is at about 16" deep. While all 3 were clean shears, the one 16" deep slid with some energy. It also had a 1"+ slab that pealed off like a layer cake when the block slid. (Photo) Basically, the pack is a mess of crusty layers that are healing very slowly. It didn't seem like this little dump of new snow changed much in the pack as it came without a lot of moisture content and weight. My runs were sheltered tree runs due to the poor lighting on open slopes and the sketchy internals of the snow pack. The new snow sluffed off of turns, but didn't step down, even on test slopes and small convexities. A step-down into the multiple layers is possible on large, steep connected slopes. Snow machines or poor group dynamics could easily propagate some of these layers deeper in the pack on steeper exposures. Lots of great things to ski though as this little wave did produce some nice powder. Road access off of the East Shore rd. is still difficult. Snow line above 3,500' with the road either dirt or sheets of ice below that.