Light precipitation all morning, mostly cloudy and fairly good visibility until reaching the main bowl. Lighting was a bit flat above the trees. Wind picked up around noon, gusting to around 20 mph. Briefly some heavy snow but then it went back to light precip.
Observation: Girdwood
Location: Lower Ragged Top
Toured up through the trees and alders slightly south of the main uptrack to the main bowl and then skied down along the standard uptrack.
Weather
Snow surface
Pretty soft surface from lower to upper elevations. In the main bow, the upper 5 to 35 cm was relatively soft, if a little dense, and good for skiing (see pit photo). Height of snow 285 cm.
Snowpack
We dug a pit at our high point at 2,500 feet on an east facing slope with a slope of 28 degrees. Top 35 cm was soft, with some very faint layering, and then transitioned to a hard and very dense snowpack that continued down through the rest of our 115 cm deep pit. No crusts or ice layers observed. The transition from the upper softer snow to the dense deeper snow did not have any ice, crust or sugary snow at that transition. Shovel shear test broke moderately at that transition layer, 35 cm down from the surface. An extended column test was ECTX.
Pit at 2,500 ft in the main bowl of lower Ragged Top.
Nice day!