Observation: Summit

Obscured
28F
East 15-20mph g 30mph
Light snow, only a 1/2" of snow fell on our truck

3" of new snow on top of older faceted snow at lower elevations that were protected from the wind.
Ridgelines were scored to old tracks and sastrugi. Only a little vegetation and rocks were showing. Wind was blowing from the East Northeast and was blowing snow onto SW aspects. There wasn't much new snow available for transport. Small stiff like wind slabs were found on the surface and varied from soft to hard, and were moderately reactive in hand pits. Wind slab depths were 3-6" inches on top of weak faceted snow below.

Snow depths varied in height from 15cm to 100cm on SW aspects. Other than a small cornice feature at the very top, we were surprised not to find more wind loading on this aspect. The only wind slabs we found were very small pockets near the W ridge on leeward slope features.

Pit #1 - 3070' WSW aspect, H=90cm - Did not find a crust at this elevation. We did find a layer of Buried Surface Hoar between the new snow and old faceted snow. Our test scores were ECTN7. Slab was soft and didn't propagate. Snow pack very was uniform and right side up, other than the small soft wind slab near surface.

In general the snowpack seemed similar to last week, except with more scouring along ridges and 3-6" pockets of wind affected snow on leeward terrain features.