Observation: Chugach State Park

Overcast skies, ~25F to 35F most of the day, no precipitation, mostly no wind with small bursts of moderate wind from the SW

The wind has transported most of the snow early this week so we observed either mostly bare ground or gullies filled with wind-deposited snow.

At the top of our ski descent, the first ~500 to 1000' of the run was lighter, softer snow with a faint wind skin layer that did not affect riding conditions. At lower elevations (below 3,000') the snow surface conditions changed to a variable punchy wind crust layer.

The snowpack structure was still pretty "wintery" (meaning it was not rounding and had not switched to isothermal snow yet).

There was a thin wind layer on top of the recent snow that we received over the past week. Underneath those layers was a thin, brittle melt-freeze crust with facets underneath the melt-freeze crust. Under that, we found a wind slab on top of developed facets on top of chained depth hoar.

We got no concerning test results. However, overall the structure is still poor at higher elevations.