Hankering for the view

Another medium day in the Flathead Range.
 

• Dreams of surveying the head of Tunnel Creek for for recent avalanches were mostly squashed by a stubborn ceiling of clouds and flat light. I did however observe two debris piles (from afar) in the West Fork of Tunnel Creek. Unfortunately my cameras could not document them with any definition. One slide appeared to have orginated in North facing terrain, and the other in S-E facing terrain. Likely within the most recent storm snow, and probably D2-2.5 in size base on the debris. Would want to investigate/confirm with better visability before recording in the Avalanche Tab.
• Calm winds, cool air, and not a lick of direct sunshine on us all day at upper elevations. Skies were broken/overcast, with a ceiling height that drifted between 6500-7000' most of the day.
• Dug a full depth pit on SSE facing slope on Tunnel Ridge, to assess the storm slab interface and document early December weak snow.
• Found a 25cm storm slab resting on a knife hard crust. No preserved surface hoar/near surface facets in between. This storm slab was drying out (faceting) in the upper half and still moist in the lower half. Stability test showed this layer stubborn to react. Hand pits out our asent of a polar aspect had more or less the same results as well. The crust is an obvious suspect for a failure plane, however the interface was showing resistant planar results. We were surprised by these results, and still planned our day around not really trusting it. Especially in this drainage, where the slab is 10" thick.
• We found 8cm of Facets and Depth Hoar at the bottom of the snowpack (1-2.5mm). These grains were very much rounding/rounded and did not produce failure in stability test.
• We skiied E and SE facing slopes into Paola Creek. We found enjoyable riding and minimal signs of instability. The new snow was showing almost no wind effect and skiing heavy, but still somewhat unconsolidated. Some sluffing on small steep openings we skied, but we were again surprised by how stubborn the recent snow was to even slough on steep very crustly slopes.