Whitewater Ski Area 061125

Since the ski area was closed, I figured it was fair game to ski up and dig a full pit, which is getting harder to do with a snowpack of 156 cm at that spot.

Steven's Pass Observation 061118

Yesterday’s sortie to Steven’s Pass was great in terms of snow science, but awful in terms of skiing due to a mean breakable crust.
The observations took one hour, based mostly on my rustiness since it has been almost 4 years since I last made and recorded a proper observation. In layman’s terms there is 7 cm of cold snow on top of a hard crust made by the rain event late last week. Under this layer, it was a Very Easy Shear when the column was isolated for a compression test. This elimated the need for a Rutschblock or a Shovel shear test. The rain crust was very strong and acted as a good bridge over this weak layer. I would expect that the rain and warming that occurred last night will further strengthen the rain crust at 1 meter. Also noteworthy is the column isolated under this layer (the bottom 100 cm of snow) was extremely strong and was removed from the pit in a single heavy column. Below is my Snow profile.

Moist snow on the Marsh

It is about time that some snow fell on the soggy ground. I have been studying the OGRS as it is called and getting ready to dig some pits.