Periodic blowing snow and isolated small reactive wind slab on Castle peak.

We went to the Castle Pass and lower NW Castle Peak area today to look at wind slabs and the Dec 12 rain crust. NE winds were moderate in speed with blowing snow occurring only during gusts. Old hard wind slabs existed on many aspects at and above treeline. The old wind slabs we encountered were unreactive. Small new wind slabs formed in the past 18 hours were reactive, but we did not see new slabs thicker than 4 inches and they did not extend very far downslope. Where found, these new wind slabs failed easily on test slopes.

A snowpit targeting the Dec 12 rain crust dug in mostly wind protected terrain on a NW aspect at treeline at 8,250' (noted lat/long) showed no evidence of instability in the upper snowpack. Some faceting and erosion of the Dec 12 rain crust were noted, but the snowpack remains well bonded to the top and bottom of this crust.