Freemont Camp - Heavenly

We dug a pit in an area within Heavenly called Freemont camp, but more commonly referred to as Big Slide.  The upper portion of Big Slide is representative of a backcountry snowpack, as it sees little to no skier traffic. Our goals were to identify the persistent weak layer in our snow pack, attempt to ID any buried SH, and to determine the stability of the snowpack.

When we began the excavation of the pit, snowfall rates were S1. As we began layer and grain ID, snowfall rates increased to S2 and potentially higher for short periods of time. Wind speeds were moderate gusting to strong. We were unable to find any signs of SH. We were able to find the persisent weak layer of developed fist hard facets buried about 4ft deep. We did not find any crusts near/within the persistent weak layer in this location that are present in most areas around Tahoe.

We recorded results of CTN and ECTN18 Q3 (BRK) @20 cm down. With both tests, we gave a few extra hard hits after completing the tests to attempt to force failure, and were successful. Both tests failed within the faceted weak layer (41-19cm) and the ECT propagated across the column.

We skied the slope at 1:45pm from 8,595ft to 6,700ft and the rain/snow line was below that with minor accumulations down low. Earlier in the day (9:30am), the rain/snow line was found at 7,100ft.