Date of Observation: 01/30/2017
Name: Arden Feldman
Aspect: South East, South West
Elevation: Below Tree Line
Avalanches: No new avalanches observed.
Weather: Clear, light winds, and warming up.
Snowpack: Dug down to the storm interface in clearings on SE and SW aspects. SE had a fist hard slab sitting on a 2-3 cm melt freeze crust at the storm interface with no surface hoar present. It failed on mid slab instabilities as CTM SC but did not propagate during an ECT. With hard taps SE also failed on facets just below the crust but with irregular breaks. SW had 3-4, 1-2 cm melt freeze crusts in the top 50 cm with no surface hoar present. With medium to hard taps irregular failures occurred under the crusts.
A thin crust had formed at the surface on SE aspects and surface hoar was preserved at the surface through the afternoon. SW aspects were still wet at the surface during the afternoon and the surface hoar had been burned off.