Today, storm snow varied from 30-50cm below and near treeline. It snowed all day, and with the combination of wind and new snow, the skin track kept getting blown. I noticed no significant cracking or collapsing within the snow where I traveled, even on slightly steeper wind-loaded slopes. You would get localized cracking under your skis in some places, but nothing was shooting more than a foot from my ski.

Butler Gulch

From the Jones Pass trailhead, I followed the Butler Gulch trail.

I dug two snowpits today, around 11,600ft, one on a north-facing slope and the other on an east-facing slope. Overall, both places help more than 150cm of snow, with about 30-50cm of new snow.

In the north-facing snow profile, before I even started to do any tests or get a hand hardness, I noticed a thick section of snow, which looked like it might be problematic. When I went to clean my walls, this layer fell out without much force. This layer was the meat of two facet layers, both on top and bottom of this Pencil hard layer. As I went to isolate my Extended Column Test, I got propagation on top of this Pencil layer, down about 40cm from the surface. Most of this snowpack was made up of some facets of varying hardness. After I removed the top 40cm, which broke on isolation, I continued an ECT to see if anything would break deeper in the snowpack, which it did not.

In the east-facing snow profile, I found a right-side-up snowpack with a snow height of 206cm. I only ended up digging down to 80cm. I got no propagation on an ECT with softer Fist minus snow and gradually working towards Pencil hard. This slope may not be representative of most east-facing slopes in the zone as it was heavily wind-affected.

It was a warm-ish storm day with light to moderate winds for most of the day and snowing all day.