Observation: Girdwood

Clear and sunny
winds calm
no new precip
temps inverted - single digits in shady valley bottom and low 20F's in sunny alpine

3-5mm surface hoar found below 2000'
6" of near surface facets on crust on all aspects and elevations

Thin snow pack in general through this whole zone. Probed around on a NW aspect at 3500' and height of snow averaged 90cm. Dug a pit in this location and found the bottom 1/2 of pit was a knife hard melt/freeze crust sitting on rocks. Some basal faceting but mostly the melt/freeze crust was bonded to the ground in this location. Middle portion of the snow pit consisted of several breakable melt/freeze crusts with facets between. These layers were brittle and there was no slab on top worthy of doing a stability test in this location. The upper 6" was loose near surface facets.

All hand pits showed an average of 6" of near surface facets sitting on a crust. We found pockets of wind hardened snow that were breakable, and nothing supportable or slab-like from 3500' down. Spoke with a group who skied from 4500' into a couloir and said they could feel a crust under foot the entire descent and the surface snow variable, breakable wind hardened snow and loose snow. Spoke with another group who had returned from Rosie's Roost descending Goat mountain via the SW shoulder. They said they noticed some new sun crust on steep rocky Southerly aspects that was not there two days prior on their ascent.