4ft of storm snow at Blue Lakes

4ft of storm snow in sheltered terrain, on top of 1ft thick rain layer that hasn't quite refrozen yet. Difficult to get onto steep test slopes today, but I did manage to cut several rolls and steep road cuts, with no shooting cracks observed. We also got onto wind loaded slopes that were too low angle for slope testing, but they did have higher density wind loaded snow on top of less dense snow.

Pic 1: Rider is 6'4" standing upright in his trench. Good traction 4' down due to the rain layer, but because this layer is still wet, it was also still easy to trench through.

Pic 2: Layer of graupel right above the rain layer, observed in several locations.  Column tests showed lingering storm density changes within the top 2ft, but no signs of propagation observed with formal or informal tests (columns were not isolated down to graupel layer due to depth). Storm snow observed to be "right side up" in sheltered terrain, and denser on top in wind loaded terrain.

Pic 3: This wind roll is a regular feature but looked especially large today. Strong winds were oberserved to be transporting significant snow all day. Numerous periods of greater than S2 snowfall rates.