Mostly sunny in the morning with clouds building in the afternoon and occasionally obscuring ridgelines. Calm winds and temperatures in the low thirties in the morning and closer to forty in the afternoon.
Observation: Turnagain
Location: Tincan
Broke trail through about a foot of light and dry new snow up to Tincan Common. Dug a pit on the north side of the ridge at about 3200′ and found a concerning layer of facets about a foot deep that had unstable results in our stability tests.
Weather
Snow surface
There was about 10-12" of light new snow that fell overnight. This sat on top of a layer of moist snow and a crust . There was widespread wind effect visible on the snow surface, but the areas we saw all still had soft snow on the surface with just a thin 2-4" soft wind crust on top in exposed areas. Around 1 pm on our way out the snow was moist at lower elevations on a W aspect.
Snowpack
We dug one snowpit on a NW aspect at 3200'. There was about a foot of low density new snow sitting on top of a layer of facets that was about 4" thick. In our extended column test the layer of facets failed twice, once at the top on 21 taps and then in the middle on 24 taps (ECT P 21, 24). This weak layer could produce avalanches now and will become more loaded once the next round of precipitation and wind starts this evening.
Failure with full propagation in an extended column test in the facet layer buried about a foot deep.
Some sun triggered wet loose avalanches on S face of Eddies with one larger glide release of unknown age.
A little bit of dry loose debris at the base of the gullies that come off the N face of Sunburst.
Clouds moving in and out in the afternoon.
Some light wind affected snow at treeline and above, but the snow surface was still pretty soft on the test rolls we checked.
Sun triggered roller balls on the SE face of Seattle Ridge from the new snow overnight.
Tincan was in fine form today with a foot of new snow and great coverage in the trees.
Weak layer of facets buried about a foot deep on a NW aspect at 3200'