Avalanches: none observed.
Weather: Mostly sunny, strong radiation, becoming windier and cloudier from WNW by 1300. High temps in mid teens at 12,000ft.
Snowpack: Pretty encouraging snowpack across areas travelled today. Definitely evidence of significant wind transport, wind sculpted snow surfaces. Dug one profile, 10,800ft, near treeline, 33º, south facing. 150-200cm deep, right-side up snowpack, majority 4F-1F-P. Tested 12/22 interface with PST. no propagating results (PST60/100arr 20161222). Travelled steep, windloaded features with no cracking, no obvious instabilities.

Xmas surface hoar lying flat (good!) found as “ghost layer” when dropping column after tests.

Moderate wind transport at 12,000ft below Augusta

Avalanches: None.
Weather: Increasing clouds. Light winds. High of 37F.
Snowpack: Snow surface obs:
West aspects N/ATL: Heavily wind textured and scoured, highly variable across slopes from P to F hard wind packed rounds and facets.
East/Southeast aspects ATL. Mostly smooth, P to 1F .2mm wind packed rounds with early surface faceting.
South aspects NTL: Moderately smooth, 2cm breakable melt-freeze crust with early faceting beneath.

Avalanches: Natural release on east face of Gothic at 12,000′. Appeared to start below cliff in sun, ran over cliff approximately 200′ airborne. Snow continued to run for about 10 minutes. N-U-R2-D2+.
Weather: Sunny, 25 F
Snowpack:

Avalanches: Extensive views from the Ruby Divide and did not see any fresh avalanche activity since the Christmas storm. I checked out the crown of the Schuylkill Ridge avalanche that ran around Christmas. It failed ~40cm deep on a layer of .5 – 1.0 mm near surface facets (Dec 22nd interface). This interface appears to be rounding and gaining strength, no significant hardness change or size change from the slab above, and non-propagating ECT results. The avalanche was SS-N-R3-D2-O. There were several other similar slides in adjacent paths. These bed surfaces hold a shallow, faceted snowpack now.
Weather: Clear. Light winds.
Snowpack: Snow depth consistently 230cm+ on various aspects/elevations except in obvious wind scoured locations. Dug 3 pits down to Dec 22nd interface and found it to be unreactive in extended column tests, anywhere from 70cm to 30cm deep, MFcr over rounding facets on southerly ATL, and rounding near surface facets on northerly N/BTL. No surface hoar observed in any pits, even in a suspect wind sheltered slope BTL. Wednesday’s wind event left shallow (less than 6″) but stiff drifts on obvious features. Stomped on a few of these and only produced minor cracking.  No other signs of instability.

Stubborn/unreactive wind drifts in specific locations, easy to avoid.

12/25 Schuylkill slide snapped a few small trees

Crown is mostly drifted over now. Very wide propagation

Avalanche appeared to fail about 40 cm deep on buried near surface facets.

Avalanches:
Weather: Overcast with periods of light snow. Calm to light winds out of the west mid day becoming stronger and gusty in the afternoon. Robust snow transport beginning in the afternoon at ridge top level.
Snowpack: Dug around a bit on the approach. HS was 160cm. Found the NSF or buried surface hoar layer that has been discussed in recent forecast discussions. It was 30cms down snow above was starting to gain cohesion but was still fist to 4F. This layer was reactive to shovel shear and CT tests with clean failure planes. It will be interesting to see what will happen on this layer with the next load of snow. Also of note in this location the DH at the ground was 10cms and consisted of wet 1-1.5mm rounding facets. Mid pack was very stiff, 1F or greater and was difficult to distinguish the various storm layers. Rode slopes up to 35 degrees with no signs of instability.