Avalanche: Turnagain

Mostly to partly cloudy skies. Winds were light at treeline and in sheltered areas, but we could see active wind transport along ridgelines. Temperatures were in the low 30s F at the road, but felt much colder above 2000' like 15 to 20 F.

At low elevations there was about 4" of moist snow on top of a thick icy crust. The crust would probably be supportable for skis, but was only partially supportable for a snowmachine, and not supportable for boots. The new snow got deeper at upper elevations, with 10-12" above 2000'. The depth of new snow varied a lot in areas that were getting wind.

We dug two snowpits, one at 1400' and one at 3000'. At 1400' we found a layer of facets buried about a foot deep. Above the facets was a mix of moist snow and icy crust, with the new snow on top. We got no results on our extended column test at this location.

At 3000' the location where we dug only had a total snow depth of 4.5' (140 cm), which was almost the same as the 1400' pit. We found a layer of facets about a foot deep, but the only snow on top of them was the new snow from last night. This doesn't really fit with how I expect the snowpack structure should look for this layer to be the January facets, so overall this pit was a little confusing. We did not get any results in that faceted layer or within the layer of new snow.