Observation: Hatcher Pass

Clear skies all day. No clouds. No wind. No precip.

44.5 F @ 11:15 at 3,975', southern aspect
46 F at 12:15 at 4,247' , southern aspect
53 F @ 13:15 at Independence Mine parking lot

On south facing aspects- snow surface was smooth, not loaded. We observed a sun crust forming at all elevations.

On north facing aspects- the snow was low density powder at the surface. Dreamy riding conditions on the northerlies. Nosebleed was fun to ski.

We wanted to see what the effect of the recent rising temps was on the southerly aspects. We noticed that the temps have not been dipping down below freezing overnight at upper elevations for multiple days in a row now so that combined with rising temps in the day could lead to some instabilities within the snowpack. We also were curious about the near surface facets layer and wanted to conduct an ECT test to see how reactive that layer was.

We did multiple ski pole probing tests on our skin track up and conducted several hand shears. We were looking to see how much wet snow was accumulating on the surface of south facing aspects from the toasty sunny day.

We dug one pit at 4,247' on Microdot on a south facing aspect at a 29 degree slope. Snow height was 150 cm. We found three MF crusts- one at the surface and two in the upper layers of the snow pit. We also found near surface facets in between the upper crust layers. Our test results were ECTN29 on the near surface facets and MF crust interface. We did not observe any propagation in our ECT.