21-22

@ 0600

We parked at Sawtell Parking area on Friday. We rode into Whit Elephant Canyon, Tyler Creek, and the ridge between Stamp Meadows Trail and Yale Creek. We dug 2-3' a west facing pit in White Elephant Canyon at 6,000 ft. elevation 50/50 open area with some shading. This pit was solid consolidated snow to the dirt and not any noticeable solar affect, and no faceted snow at the ground. We got no results on the ECT and had to pry the block out. On the Tyler Creek pit again 2-3' we were at 6,500 on a north facing slope in heavy tree cover. At ground level we had 3 to 4" of faceted snow. It we extremely obvious. This pit we got initiation, in the 25 hit area, no ECTP. The thing that stood out for us as I was teaching a new IDPR Educator was the significant difference at ground level with the faceting snow, just in the change of aspect. For the ridge pit above Sawtell Road we were at 7,100 ft., on a south east open facing slope around 3.5'. We had about 1cm to 1.5cm think solar crust developing. You could only hold about a 10" pie pc together before it broke. Not much strength in the solar crust. Under that pretty consolidated snow and minimal faceting at ground level. This pit also initiated at 25 hits but no ECTP results. 

We took our class on Saturday to the Tyler Creek pit since it had layering with that 3-4" of faceted snow. Again we manipulated this pit as hard as we could to try and get propagation by tricks Dave Zinn had showed me but we could not get past just initiation. 

Today we checked out the Ramshorn Peak basin in the Tobacco Roots. We skied a northeast aspect on the southern ridge of Ramshorn and found isolated pockets of wind loading, and an ECT revealed an ECTN 16 @ 20cm (HS 145cm). A couple of hand pits collected on this aspect suggest that this windslab has the potential to move (Q2 shears with easy to moderate difficulty) with new snow or sustained warmer temps. The warmer temps were noticeably effecting the snow at lower elevations and direct south aspects. We observed small pinwheels increase throughout the day on southern aspects, and noticed a large cornice failure on the southeast face of Ramshorn. We found a small and protected wind drift on a southern aspect and, with relative ease, kicked off the cornice (photo). 

Out the last couple days with AAI Rec 2. Variable snow surfaces before this next snowfall. SE, S, W are getting cooked up to 10,000 feet, especially after today. Primarily scoured or nsf everywhere else. Mostly ECTX due to no slab present in most locations, but found a 60cm pencil hard slab at 9800 ft today on N aspect on Blackmore, ECTP 19. We did not ski the line. Weak snow was present throughout the snowpack everywhere we dug.