Silvern Lakes

Today was our first day at Silvern Lakes. Access into this area is pretty rough! Lots of alder bashing, creek crossings, and even a frozen moose carcass in one of the creeks. Snow coverage is very good here for this time of year, with 165 cm of snow where we dug. In our snowpit, we found the Nov surface hoar layers at 45 and 55 cm below the snow surface. In extended column tests, we were not able to get any propagating results. In compression tests, we were able to get moderate broken results on the surface hoar layers at 45 and 55 cm. The Nov surface hoar was only 2mm in size here, the smallest we have found throughout the northwest inland region. We had good visibility into the alpine today and saw no recent avalanche activity.