Trolls under the bridge

Traveled into the backcountry adjacent to Big Mountain to look for a layer of surface hoar that was forming prior to the hydrologic hammer earlier this week.
 

• We successfully located the well preserved layer of surface hoar at 6620' on a NNW aspect of Hellroaring Peak. Not far below ridgetop (maybe 20 feet below).
• We conducted two ECT stability tests, and this layer of surface hoar prooved to be our layer of most concern today. ECTP11 on both tests. This layer is 35cm below the surface at this location.
• We also found the recent rain crust to be relatively thin at this elevation. It was 15cm below the surface and about 3-5cm thick. Based on our profile it seems that the 1/12-1/13 storm started as snow at this elevation, transitioned to rain breifly, and later topped off the slab with a few more inches of snow. The raincrust interface is somewhat indistinct on top and bottom, which brought us to this conclusion.
• Overall snowpack depth was 164cm.
• Skiing down the south side of the peak, we found that the wind had mostly scoured the snow surface down the the rain crust layer. This crust was supportive to a person wearing skis all the way back to the ski area boundary.