Observation: Chugach State Park

Toured up the south side of the Peak 2/Peak 3 area. Along the exposed ridge line the snow was very thin
and wind blown with varying wind slabs, hard crusts, and soft snow pockets. Went up the south bowl
adjacent to Peak 2 (just West of Peak 3) and dug a pit at 3100ft. The bowl had a deeper snowpack but
had the same hard slab/wind slab pockets. The pit showed a fairly shallow snowpack with a steep temp
gradient in the middle (up to 2.5C/10cm). This correlated well to the facets that were growing in this part
of the snow pack. The facets seemed to be bonded fairly well to the other layers but I performed an ECT
and pulled out a very clean shear at 21 taps down in by the interface of the two bottom faceted layers. A
second test also confirmed this. I wasn’t too worried about this as it took a lot of force to pull out the
shear but the facets will only continue to grow as the clear, cold weather prevails. Over the next week this
layer will become weaker and weaker leading to the possibility of easier deep slabs pulling out.