Observation: Turnagain

Overcast to obscured skies limited travel today. Light snowfall off and on. Winds were moderate near the ridge, enough to move snow around and filled in our tracks. Temperatures in the lower 30's to upper 20's.

5-8" of new snow from overnight! This was damp and sticky below 2,000' before drying out by 3,000'. Winds were transporting snow above 3,000' and although building wind slabs 5-10" thick, at our locations the slabs were still a bit damp and not reactive. I'm guessing they would have been much more reactive at the higher elevations or areas where the snow was drier.

At the lower elevations, today's new snow was sliding in the wet loose push-a-lanche style on the rain crust from 3/26 in very steep, greater than 40 degree, terrain.

We dug one pit at 3,200' on a SW aspect (photo below). There was a layer of buried surface hoar ~ 16" down that failed around the 15th tap on a ECT test - ECTN 15 - did not propagate or show much spunk at all. After this, we had a ECTP 21 sudden collapse in a 5cm layer of small rounding facets down 30". Slab was fist hard at the top to pencil at the bottom.

In general, no big red flags today at our elevations despite the new snow amounts and wind.