AVALANCHES: None, except minor sluffing.

WEATHER: Steady S1 through the day, increased to S2 around 4:00. Calm winds. Overcast. Mild Temps

SNOWPACK: By 4pm, 8″ of storm snow at ridgeline and 4″ of snow at valley bottom; no wind affect. About 2-3″ of new through the day. New snow was too shallow and incohesive for slab formation; no storm slab concerns (yet). Falling on near surface facets on North/Northeast aspects. On these slopes, the snowpack felt almost entirely faceted in many places, except as we got higher near treeline, where some lingering stronger midpack prevailed. 5 pits, never saw surface hoar, but fist hard facets in every pit in the upper snowpack. The only pit with propagating results was a windloaded feature where a shallow, persistent slab from recent wind events was over near surface facets. On East and Southeast aspects, the new snow is on meltfreeze crusts. Warm snow seemed to be bonding decently, but there were a few slopes with thin crust /facet/crust sandwich (Feb 20th and Feb 16th crusts), and these produced small, localized cracking. Bottom line – plenty of weak layers out there under this storm snow, just need more snow/wind loading.

WEATHER: Mixed bag of weather: Visibility ranged from 0.1 km to 2 km. Rates of snowfall ranged from S-1 to S2. Winds ranged from calm to light. No snow was transported.

SNOWPACK: Previous snow totals ranged from 1cm to 4cm.

UPLOADS:

WEATHER: ELEVATION: 9300’ to 10,200′

ASPECT: SE – E

Broken to overcast skies, snowing S2, moderate west winds at 9,900’ (but strong to extreme winds at Snodgrass trailhead), temp 0ºC. Winds seemed to ease a bit through afternoon. Pulses of convective activity passed through all afternoon, but total accumulation was about 2cm by 3:30PM.

SNOWPACK: Class activity for day was a full profile. Pit was located at 10,200’ on an east aspect, 17º slope. (See weather info above.) HS 88cm; HN24 2cm (rimed stellars); Tsurf -3.5ºC. Snowpack was a combination of facet layers, with 3mm DH in the bottom 10cm. Most dramatic interface was 25cm below surface; but didn’t appear to be buried SH and did not react to compression tests (although it was a 17º slope). Most interestingly, the facet layer from 10cm to 37cm was 1F and may have been sintering.

AVALANCHES: none yet

WEATHER: overcast in am, snowing and blowing in afternoon, clearing out to broken skies at sunset.

SNOWPACK: 7cms of new snow on West slopes at 10k above townsite. Resting on stout MF crust (10cm thick) on solar aspects. Strong winds blowing new snow around from NW at ridge top and down valley N winds at valley floor. No new instabilities noted (yet).

SNOWPACK: Significant pre-frontal winds (strong to extreme at all elevations) worked the snow surface over. Trace of new snow. Maybe an inch of pinecone/pineneedle accumulation.

AVALANCHES: No signs of instability

WEATHER: Light to Moderate west winds. Few clouds. Temps rose to 39F at 10,000 ft, and 27F at 12,000 ft.

SNOWPACK: The fresh surface snow was moist midday on SE to SW aspects.

On E to SE aspects near/above treeline: A few 4″ thick pockets 1F recently drifted snow in the upper 15 feet of start zones, well bonded. This surface was small (<.3mm) windpacked rounds (RGwp). Most of the terrain was 1-2″ of decomposing fragmented particles (DF, DFbk) with .3mm near surface facets growing, over the Feb 16th Meltfreeze crust, which is thick and supportive.

On South aspect near treeline: 1mm radiation recrystallization facets over 1” of moist snow, over the February 16th MFcr. May have gotten cooked later in the day on steep slopes? Still easily visible on low angle late in the day. No obs from steep terrain

On West aspect above treeline: Top 1/3 of start zones blown out to Feb 16th meltfreeze crust, which is wind scalloped texture. Bottom 2/3 of run holding the last 2” of fresh snow over Feb 16th MFcr, sastrugi texture, looked like some near surface faceting but didn’t pull out hand lens. No recent windloading visible across the whole wall.