Forestdale Divide

Our first snowmobile ride for the season, we treated today as a "shakedown" ride to prep for more days to come. Our location provided a good opportunity to check on basal facets near 9000ft, which I'm glad we did because the unstable results wouldn't have been known to us without targeted, formal obs. With 100cm of high density snow above the basal facets, I decided Extended Column Tests might not be able to trigger the facets, so I chose Deep Tap Tests instead. They produced unstable, Sudden Collapse results. This was a good reminder that without targeted, formal obs, we might have incorrectly assumed stable conditions ("false stable").

2-3ft of dense snow observed on shaded aspects from 8300ft-9300ft. Informal obs did not indicate instability, but formal tests near 9000ft produced unstable results on the facets at the ground.