Snowpack tests Werner Peak

We rode to the west side of Werner Peak in the Whitefish range to  look for the persistent slab problem and look at near treeline slopes on south and west aspects prior to the wind shift forecasted for tonight.

• No obvious recent avalanches in Canyon Creek en route to our destination. We saw no direct signs of instability. Neither under our sleds for the short distance past the packed road that we went, nor on foot as we tromped to test pit locations.
• We did get consistent propagating failures on west and southwest aspects at 6300'. One failure layer consisted of softer old snow sandwiched between thin, stiff old wind deposits. The other, more obvious layer of concern was the facet/crust combo buried on Groundhog's Day.
• Very light snow all morning, and we noticed that there are about 10" of soft snow for the wind to play with. Winds this morning, however, were light from the southwest and we saw no blowing snow.