Encountered no signs of instability.
Observation: Chugach State Park
Location: Glen Alps, Chugach Front Range
Left GA parking lot at 1200. Headed up the north aspect of Blueberry Knoll. Climbed up to the ridgetop and skied to the SE end of the knoll. At that point strong winds and blowing snow turned us around. Descended via our uptrack. Did not encounter signs of recent avalanches but visibility was poor and light flat.
Observer Comments
Weather
Skies overcast with snow starting to fall at approx. 1100. Continued for rest of day. Vis down to 0.5 mi at times with blowing snow and east winds estimated at 20mph. At 1400 was 31deg at the GA weather sta. Considerable ground transport of snow taking place near ridge tops. Lee slopes starting to load during our tour.
Snow surface
Snow surface in protected areas at lower elevations had a dusting of new snow overlying a 1cm MF (rain?) crust. Below that loose snow. At higher elevations encountered mostly wind slab of variable thickness (pic) with some pockets of loose snow. Seems others would call this situation “spatial Variability”. Ski cutting on steeper slopes produced thin pizza box slabs.
Snowpack
Did a quick pit at 2635 ft on the SW aspect and just below Blueberry Knoll ridge top on a snow loaded slope. HS 128 cm, aspect 240deg, SA 18deg. Top 10 cm consisted of recent 1F wind slab overlying older rounds. Pretty much the same density down to the last 30cm above ground consisting of 4F rounding facets. CT23@18cm down Q1, ECTN27@18cm down with no propagation. Spin drift swirling in pit made note taking difficult at times.
inverted slab of wind crust overlying loose snow