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Weather Summary

Light winds blowing out of the SW, rapidly shifting cloud cover, from scattered to overcast. Snowing up to S3 for short periods. Rain had fallen earlier in the day, maybe up to about 7,000'. Hard to be certain on this since the rained-on snow was still wet.

Snowpack Observations

Went out looking for presence of persistent slab problem in upper snowpack on slope similar to where ASu occurred yesterday. On a north-facing slope (350) at 7900' I found several layers of facets buried over the course of March. Deepest of these faceted layers was accompanied by a very subtle crust (down 45-50cm, underneath FC) and produced propagating results in ECTs (ECTP13 and ECTP15) and clean shears in nonstandard pits. Based on appearance of crown in photo it seems likely this is the same configuration that produced the skier-triggered slide on 3/28. Overlying slab varied from 1F- at the base to F on top. I found the presence of this combination on other north-facing slopes , though it didn't seem to be as pronounced as I wrapped around to the E. Hard to be certain how widespread this problem is, but based on observation today I'd imagine it is relatively common. Will be interesting to see if we start to see some natural activity on this as we continue to load slopes in the coming days.

Terrain Use

Avoided slopes steeper than about 33 where persistent problem was anticipated.