Deep Snow and Signs of Instability on Brockway Summit

We got an early start and went to Gold Star Peak off Brockway Summit. We knew this area had plenty of low angle terrain. It was also a good spot to see weak layers like facets below the recent rain crust and buried surface hoar. It provided a place where we could travel safely by avoiding avalanche terrain, a place where we could see how the weak layers reacted to new loading, and a place that we could access and return from even if roads/passes closed. 

Once we started skinning, we could feel that last night's storm snow was slightly heavier than the colder lighter snow that fell earlier this week. We dug several mitt pits on the way up the peak in open areas. Each time we found easy failures on a buried surface hoar layer a little more than a foot below the surface. The recent rain crust felt weaker in this area, and it had weak snow (near crust facets) just below it. We did several informal snowpit tests and got unstable results. We also dug a full snowpit and got unstable test results on the buried surface hoar layer and on the facets below the recent rain crust. We experienced some small collapses as we skinned. None of these collapses extended more than a few feet from our skis. 

During our tour, we stayed in terrain less steep than 30 degrees, but we also looked for small test slopes that were steeper and had no potential for propagating to larger slopes. We found several on road cuts, above trees, and some on small terrain features. When we ski cut these test slopes, we triggered some cracking but the cracks did not travel far from our skis. The new snow still did not exhibit well-formed slab characteristics in the sheltered areas that we traveled in. Once the snow cracked and started sliding downhill on our test slopes, it would lose cohesion and move as something between a sluff and a soft slab. We did not find any wind loaded slopes in this area, but we expected in areas with wind loading more of a slab would exist. 

Snowfall rates remained light (around .5 in/hr) during our tour. We also saw a few breaks in the clouds during our tour.