Quiet day where we travelled with no cracking or collapsing. The snowpack structure is still concerning but is better than a week ago. Sunny slopes, as well as east and west-facing slopes at lower elevations had stout crusts around an inch thick that began to break down a little after noon. Slopes facing the north half of the compass retained cold snow despite the very warm weekend. There are two weak layers of concern on these more worrisome north-facing slopes and the potential for avalanches breaking on the upper weak layer (generally around 50cm deep) clearly have the potential to step down to deeper weak layers closer to the ground (generally around a meter deep). I suspect these conditions exist on east and west-facing slopes above 11,500 feet or so, but we did not get into this terrain today.

Green Mountain

Express Creek past the Markley Hut to lower north-facing slopes of Green Mountain

Average height of the snowpack us around 140cm. The slab that formed from the Valentine's to President's Day storm is 4F in stiffness, and rests over a weak layer of buried near-surface or crust-facet combinations around 50cm deep. We observed hard-to-initiate propagating failures in this layer with Extended Column Tests (ECTP 25). Propagation Saw Tests also produced propagating failures on this layer. (PST 30/100 End down 50cm). The mid-pack slab is around a little stiffer and could mostly support you in boots, but you could punch through the slab with a little bit of force. There is a pronounced weak layer of large-grained facets (some depth hoar up to 4mm in size) under the mid-pack slab. We did not get results on this lower weak layer in ECTs but PST did produce results (PST 30/100 End down 100cm). with a notable drop in the slab (see video).

Mostly clear, sunny and warm. West to southwest winds were very light, but we didn't get into the alpine.