At the near-treeline elevation on Farwell Mountain, I did not find a concerning weak layer buried in the mid-to-upper snowpack and I did not see propagating results in snowpack instability tests. With these recent warm temperatures escalating settlement, the mid-February slab is becoming quite firm. With a loading event approaching early this week, I would suspect any avalanches in this area would fail on a crust at the new/old snow interface or within the storm snow, but would not fail within the old snow, and would be unlikely to step-down into old snow except perhaps where the snowpack is thinner.

Farwell Mountain

Parked at Pearl Lake State Park and followed the southwest ridge to the near-treeline area of Farwell Mountain.

The snow was crunchy first thing in the morning, but by 10:30 the surface crust was melting on south and southwest aspects below treeline and there was already good corn skiing. As I approached the near-treeline elevation band on Farwell (which is a bit above 10,000 feet) and traversed north, I experienced a surface crust on northwest and even north aspects, though the crust on north was so thin I only noticed it when I dug a snowpit. In this snowpit just a few degrees west of north, I found a height of snow of 185cm. It was a dry snowpack that was mostly 1-finger to pencil hard snow in the upper 100cm. The early-February warm-up layer was buried 80cm down. Closer to the ridge on a similar aspect the height of snow was much shallower (115cm) and the February layer buried closer to 45cm down. Traversing over to south and southeast slopes near-treeline in the afternoon, I found the top 15-20cm of the snowpack to be wet down to a crust, and I found moist snow beneath that, up to 60cm deep from the surface on south aspects. I found the snowpack on these slopes to be mostly 1-finger to pencil hard in the upper 100cm.

Clear skies and light southwest winds. Temperatures were above freezing by afternoon. No new snow.