Digging a pit near treeline on a semi sheltered flat slope revealed a series of melt freeze crusts (remnants of this season's drought periods) that are sandwiched by preserved facet layers throughout the top half of the snowpack. Like a staircase where each step brings you deeper under the snow once it breaks, these crusts feel stable until their breaking point at which they collapse irregularly in shovel shear tests with easy force towards the top of the snowpack and moderate force towards the middle of the snowpack. Compression test (-). While there are signs of a transition towards a stable spring snowpack (rounding faceted particles, ice deposits within a pencil to knife hard 10cm thick melt freeze crust), near and above treeline slopes are still holding cold, dry snow that is allowing the crusts above them to break. Of course, below these crust-facet sandwiches is 100cm of basal facets that are still very weak and slow to heal. Touring from the hut @~11,000ft up to ~13,000ft, we saw one cliff shelf that cleaned out this season's snow to the level of the rock and left a large cornice overhang, and one other natural avalanche high up on a nearby peak that was relatively E facing.

Toured around the Green Wilson hut up to the North basin of Pearl Mountain to 13,000ft