Date of Observation: 03/07/2017
Name: Zach Guy, Evan Ross
Aspect: North East, East, South East
Elevation: 9000-11,600
Avalanches: No signs of instability near or below treeline.
Weather: Decreasing winds through the day. Few clouds.
Snowpack: A few inches of new snow. Traveled in gullies, leeward ridgelines, and other suspect features for wind loading N/BTL and drifts were negligible; less than 3″ deep. It appears the extreme winds blew more snow away than loaded it. In areas where we did encounter thin drifts, it was easy to produce cracking, indicating poor bonding.
Investigated the PS structure NTL. On SE aspects, there was a ~3cm crust capping a faceting slab (~30 cm) over the crust facet layer, and this structure appeared to be non-concerning where we traveled. On an E aspect, several crust/facet layers were buried 40 cm deep, and produced non-propagating, broken fractures under hard initiation (ECTN 25 BRK).