As forecast, the snow surface had frozen nicely providing a super-highway skin track. Below 5000' the crust was a pencil hard 1 to 4 cm thick over about 50 cm of wet low density (F) snow. Above 5400' and as I moved around to a SW aspect the crust thickened to about 7cm (photo). Very firm completely supportive snow surface from this point up to my max elevation of 6000', though the MF crust did thin to about 2cm at 6000'.
Frozen roller balls and tree bomb craters everywhere. Icy under the trees.
Dug a pit at 6000'. This snow profile was pretty uniform and had few crusts and density discontinuities. The temperature gradients within the pack are now weaker and I've been wondering if the faceted layer around 60cm I had seen in previous pits would be 'healing'. I did not see or feel anything in the 60cm vicinity this time but a CT and ECT did produced a clean and propagating fracture at 64cm. There was definitely a sugary layer on the fracture plane that I could say did not look as faceted as previous pits I've done in the area. The rest of the column broke off at the ground.
The ski down was initially just a firm groomer consistency that held an edge fine. The trouble started when that nice super-highway below 5000' lost the pavement. Several hundred feet of brushy slush with tight trees. Thankfully Broken Leg Mountain is still just a name.
