Partly sunny skies and temps in the 30s to 40s. Winds were calm at lower elevations and light as we climbed towards alder line. Clouds were moving quickly and winds looked stronger at upper elevations.
Observation: Girdwood
Location: Crow Pass Trail
Planned to head up to Crow Pass to check out conditions along the trail, but were cut short by very weak wet snow on the lower part of the trail. The SE and SW aspects above the trail head had wet snow down to the ground so we stopped and dug a pit to evaluate conditions. We found a weak layer of wet snow about 40 cm above the ground and decided to turn around instead of continuing onto a large SW facing slope with a creek below it. During spring it is best to stay off of slopes when you are sinking in deeply to wet snow because large wet slab avalanches can release spontaneously during periods of intense melt.
Weather
Snow surface
Very wet snow surfaces on flat, southeast and southwest aspects that we traveled on. You could easily punch through the whole snowpack to the ground with a ski pole and and my boot sunk all the way in.
Snowpack
We dug one pit on a SE aspect at 2000'. The snowpack was wet to moist all the way to the ground and about 3.5' deep (110 cm). The upper 10-12" was very weak and composed of very large melt freeze grains. The middle part of the snowpack was wet to moist with smaller grain sizes which gradually gained strength with depth. About 16" above the ground there was a weak layer where the melt water was pooling at the top of an old basal facet layer. We had a collapse in the weak layer in our compression test but no results in the extended column test (CT 28 SC, ECT X). Overall I would say the snowpack was very concerning for wet loose or wet slab avalanches and we decided not to cross under a large SW facing slope due to the weakness of the wet snow.
Wet loose avalanche in Goat meadows.
Wet loose with large chunks in the debris, maybe huge roller balls or chunks of cornice
Snow surface looked much colder and drier on northern aspects up high.
Several wet loose avalanches were visible as we skinned up the valley, including this one on the lower part of Magpie
Large SW facing slope with terrain trap underneath the we decided not to travel across.
One of these goats triggered a wet loose as we were skinning up.
Lots of glide avalanches releasing along Penguin Ridge above Girdwood.
Weak wet snow structure at 2000' on SE aspect above Crow Pass trail head.