Sawatch

Light flurries and overcast in the morning with moderate winds from the SW. Temps just below freezing. By 10am the wind went away and the sky was broken with intermittent sunshine and blue skies

South to West to North facing slopes were mostly faceted snowpack with the occasional wind, temperature or solar crust. On East facing slopes just below ridgelines I would often find a wind hardened slab that was firm and supportable however a handful of yards below the ridge this often disappeared and turned to mostly facets. I could occasionally find a hard slab (approx 25-35cm thick) here but many of these slabs were hard to find and are beginning to show signs of weakening into facets. When probing on these eastern slopes about 50% of the time my probe would go all the way to the ground without any pressure indicating that the whole snowpack was very weak. I did manage to find one north east facing cross loaded feature that I was able to get propagating ECT results where there was a hard slab over weak facets approximately 33cm down so the persistent problem still exists but is hard to find. The few other locations I tried a compression test yielded no results as the slabs were weaker.