Toured up Bullion Basin then through the burn to East Peak. Also skied Guns n Roses down into Pickhandle Basin

Quick report

It was a beautiful day in the Crystal Backcountry with light winds, excellent snow quality, and intermittent clouds. We planned to stick to the southern portion of the compass to avoid PWL terrain, but did our diligence digging on the solar slopes we skied. On SW-S aspects, We found 30-40cms of right side up storm snow (F to 4f) on top of a stout 3-5cm melt freeze crust that formed during the warm up on 1/27-1/29. The bond between that crust and the recent snow from the last week appeared strong with no failures on hand shears or ECT. However, when we dug below the crust we found the same concerning PWL structure that has been reported on less solar aspects. The difference being that the upper 5cms of the JDL turned into a melt-freeze crust which left a thin layer of faceted grains between that crust and the 1/10 crust. We decided to do a PST in order to test the layer of weak snow sandwiched between the two crusts and were able to produce a failure through the entire layer at 48/100cm. The bed surface (1/10 crust) was very planar and the slab slid relatively easily. Although this result was spooky and confirmed the poor structure still exists on solar aspects, we thought the stout crust above the facets was likely strong enough to bridge and prevent propagation from a load applied above. So, we conducted an ECT to see how possible it was to make this layer fail from a skier trigger. We got an ECTN 24 result on this layer which did not propagate, giving some confidence in the theory that the thick melt freeze crust is doing a good job of bridging. The big takeaway is that our findings confirmed a poor structure does still exist on solar aspects although it’s capped by a stout crust, which seems to be keeping things unreactive for now. If we get more load above that crust that might change. Although not quite as deep as northern aspects, the solar slopes still harbor some incredible powder skiing! See PST and ECT videos below… https://youtube.com/shorts/_tB-qZbEmOU?si=1DXdVQPT2_OQWdvP. https://youtu.be/JPjcUfmCLzY?si=a_KlwsbMBT5089BO