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Weather Summary

Mostly clear skies allowed for plenty of direct solar radiation until 1200 or so. Thin, high clouds began to limit incoming direct solar radiation in the early afternoon. Winds were calm until around noon, then increasing somewhat, blowing out of the W. Winds weren't steady, but occasionally gusting into the low end of moderate speeds.

Snowpack Observations

Primary objectives were to look around for recent wet avalanche activity, check into the strength of the freeze, and to look at dry snow on the northern quarter of the compass where weak layers exist in the upper snowpack.

WET STUFF: I spent quite a bit of time glassing the Sawtooths, Smokys, and White Clouds. Based on observations from 3/24 and 3/25 there was not a ton of new wet activity in the Sawtooths. I was out of the field by 1400 so its possible that more natural activity was occurring this afternoon. I did not observe any new wet slabs and most new wet loose was in the D1 category. There was one new D1.5 on McDonald Peak (south of elevator shaft) that looks like it happened today. In the White Clouds, the activity I observed was pretty limited, just a few slides, but was of the more gouging wet loose variety. I did not see any D2s here. It feels like the high cloud cover has been preventing us from quit getting to more widespread natural activity, but we are fairly close to the edge. I wouldn't be surprised to see a weaker freeze/warmer day/more solar input result in quite a bit more activity.

Despite above freezing temperatures, the combination of somewhat limited solar input yesterday and clear skies and longwave radiation overnight had allowed for a solid freeze of the upper 10-15cm of the snowpack in areas away from trees. This crust broke down relatively slowly, allowing for a reasonably long corn window into early afternoon. I skied good corn on SW around 1200 and on W around 1300.

COLD/DRY STUFF: Warm temperatures over the past day or two have built a crust on shaded aspects up to around 9,500' or so. I dug at 9,200' on a N/NE facing slope where this crust was 1-2cm thick and was underlain by some small, weak facets. This combo produced ECTP1 x2 and will be problematic if it ever snows again... :/ In this location, 1/20 (well-developed 2-3mm FC stack) was down 30cm and produced ECTN 13 and 15 and crisp CPST 31 and 34/100 END. The "slab" overlying this was fairly faceted (4F-). It doesn't appear that the warm temperatures have done a ton to improve the persistent slab problem, but hard to say that with a lot of confidence. If it snowed a fair amount I'd expect we'd still see a good bit of activity on 3/8 and 1/20