Observation: Girdwood
Location: Kern creek
Skied back Kern Creek today. No red flags observed. Little snow at lower (<500ft) made travel sub-fun. Single digit temperatures all day with persistent cloud ceiling at roughly 1000 ft.
Found 5-8 inches of low density surface snow resting on top of a rain crust. This rain crust was supportable at lower elevations, but became more brittle above roughly 1500 ft. Above 2000 ft multiple hand pits were dug along the skin track, finding overall good bonding occurring with most recent buried surface hoar. We dug two pits at 2800 ft, sw aspect, 30 degree slope, Hs unknown. One pits resulted in ECTX and the other ECTN 28 resistant planar on buried surface hoar 25 cm from surface.
Ski quality: excellent. Relatively little wind effected snow despite Friday’s wind event.